Title: Harrison v. McCleary

State: alabama

Issuer: Alabama Supreme Court

Document:

199 So. 2d 165 (1967)
James W. HARRISON et al.
v.
J. E. McCLEARY.
6 Div. 270.

Supreme Court of Alabama.
January 26, 1967.
Rehearing Denied June 1, 1967.
*166 Robt. McD. Smith and Lange, Simpson, Robinson & Somerville, Birmingham, for appellants.
Hare, Wynn, Newell & Newton, Birmingham, for appellee.
PER CURIAM.
The appellee, plaintiff below, sued James W. Harrison, Vulcan Materials Company, Birmingham Transit Company and J. C. Perry (the bus driver) for personal injuries resulting from an accident involving the automobile in which he was riding and a Birmingham Transit Company bus.
The jury returned a verdict in favor of plaintiff and against Harrison and Vulcan Materials in the amount of $30,000. It returned a verdict in favor of Perry and Birmingham Transit Company.
The appellant Harrison was driving an automobile which ran into the rear of the bus which had stopped on the right side of the street to allow passengers to get on and off. The plaintiff McCleary was riding in Harrison's automobile at the time of the accident, on the front seat with the driver. At the time of the accident, Harrison was the national sales manager for Vulcan Signs and Stamping Division of Vulcan Materials Company. McCleary was a resident of Venice, Florida and was a distributor of municipal street signs manufactured by Vulcan Sign and Stamping Division of Vulcan Materials Company. McCleary had stopped in Birmingham en route to his home in Florida from Ohio. He arrived in Birmingham around 10:00 A. M. of the day during which the accident happened. Immediately upon his arrival in Birmingham he went to the Vulcan plant and discussed business with Harrison until about 2:00 P. M. During this period of time Harrison offered to take McCleary to dinner that night. It was agreed that he would pick him up at his motel later. He did pick him up and the accident occurred while they were en route from the motel to a downtown hotel where Harrison testified they were to have dinner.
The case went to the jury on a single count charging all four defendants with negligence, and containing the following averments:
As noted, the jury returned a verdict for the plaintiff against the two defendants who have appealed here.
Appellant Vulcan raises issues not raised by Harrison but each bases the appeal on *167 the contention that the Alabama Guest Statute was applicable and that the court erred in failing to give charges which in effect would have taken the case from the jury on this issue. In other words, it is the contention of the appellants that under the facts as adduced at the trial the court should have ruled as a matter of law that the case fell within the guest statute. (Error is also urged for failure to grant a new trial on timely motion.)
This court has had several cases before it involving the application of Title 36, § 95, Code, which is as follows:
As noted in Sullivan v. Davis, 263 Ala. 685, 83 So. 2d 434, 59 A.L.R.2d 331, our statute does not undertake to define "guest." The definition of the term has been left to the court.
In an effort to discharge this responsibility, we have had occasion to express certain general rules, for example, the following from Wagnon v. Patterson, 260 Ala. 297, 70 So.2d 244:
Further, in Blair v. Greene, 247 Ala. 104, 22 So.2d 834:
In 1962, the rule was said to have been established by Blair v. Green, supra, Sullivan v. Davis, supra, and Klein v. Harris, 268 Ala. 540, 108 So. 2d 425, that
See also Russell v. Thomas, 278 Ala. 400, 178 So. 2d 556 (1965).
With the foregoing legal guidelines, let us look to the facts in the present case.
Here the tendencies of the evidence on the part of the plaintiff were to the effect that he was a business invitee of Harrison and Vulcan. It was established that he had been doing business with Vulcan for some time, that his stop in Birmingham was for *168 the purpose of discussing business with Vulcan through Harrison, its sales manager. He spent several hours during the day in which the accident occurred talking business with Harrison at the Vulcan plant. Following this business conference he returned to his motel. Harrison had offered to "buy him the best steak in town" that night. Harrison came to his motel, picked him up and the accident occurred en route to the restaurant. Plaintiff further testified, however, that it was his intention, expressed to Harrison at the afternoon parting, to discuss further business with him over dinner and in fact according to plaintiff he had prepared a list of items to go over with Harrison which list was in his pocket at the time of the accident.
Harrison on the other hand through his testimony and that adduced on his behalf took the position that the trip to dinner was purely social, having nothing whatsoever to do with business. However, he admitted that Vulcan would have reimbursed him for the expenses of taking the plaintiff to dinner.
It was undisputed that en route to dinner that night Harrison went by the Vulcan plant to pick up some memorandum pads which Vulcan gave to customers and that he gave them to plaintiff after he expressed interest in them.
Can it be gainsaid that the driver of this automobile on this occasion derived no benefit from this excursion within the meaning of the expressions contained in our cases? One side takes the position that the trip itself was purely a social occasion. The other takes the position that it was business connected; that these parties would not likely have been together on this occasion but for the fact that they had a business relationship. It is a close question. There were facts adduced at the trial, not all of which were consistent, which would support both contentions.
After a painstaking review of the evidence, we have concluded that we cannot as a matter of law in the circumstances of this case hold that no tangible benefit flowed to the driver from this automobile trip, "or that such benefit did not induce the defendant to transport plaintiff".-Sullivan v. Davis, supra.
The state of the evidence being what it is, we believe that the trial court correctly submitted the question to the jury.
We again approve the wisdom expressed in 4 Blashfield's Cyclopedia of Automobile Law and Practice, Part 1, p. 326, § 2292:
We do not find the circumstances of this case such that we could say that reasonable minds could reach but one conclusion as to the purposes for which this trip was undertaken. The determination of the question was properly left to the jury under proper charge, which we find the court did here in an unusually clear and fair charge. We find no error involved in those assignments dealing with this aspect of the appeal.
The only other assignment of error sufficiently insisted upon by appellant Vulcan is to the effect that the court erred in permitting the plaintiff to put in evidence the deposition of defendant Harrison taken some year before the trial. It is contended by Vulcan that it was error to allow this deposition in evidence against Vulcan, the *169 co-defendant. There was no error here. Under our statute, Title 7, § 474(1) et seq., the deposition of a defendant "may be used by the adverse party for any purpose". We need not go into this at length here, however, since a close reading of the record indicates that the deposition was introduced for the purpose of impeaching defendant Harrison's testimony on the stand. The deposition disclosed that Harrison had said he was taking plaintiff to dinner on the occasion of the accident "for my company". He testified on the stand that he was taking him solely for social reasons. The plaintiff was entitled to use the deposition to impeach.-Dunahoo v. Brooks, 272 Ala. 87, 128 So. 2d 485.
We find no error to reverse.
Affirmed.
LIVINGSTON, C. J., and SIMPSON, MERRILL, and HARWOOD, JJ., concur.