Title: Carter v. Treadway Trucking, Inc.

State: alabama

Issuer: Alabama Supreme Court

Document:

611 So. 2d 1034 (1992)
James A. CARTER
v.
TREADWAY TRUCKING, INC., and Pickett Junior Lane.
1910480.

Supreme Court of Alabama.
December 31, 1992.
Roger C. Appell and James R. Gillis, Birmingham, for appellant.
William P. Traylor III and Deborah S. Braden of Yearout, Myers & Traylor, P.C., Birmingham, for appellees.
ADAMS, Justice.
The plaintiff, James A. Carter, appeals from a judgment entered in his favor on a jury verdict assessing damages of $35,000 on his claim of negligence. We affirm.
This case involves a collision between a vehicle driven by James Carter and one driven by Pickett Junior Lane on the Warrior River Bridge in Jefferson County, Alabama, on July 12, 1988.
Carter, alleging that he sustained injuries as a result of the collision, sued Lane and Treadway Trucking, Inc. (Lane's employer), jointly and severally. The complaint alleged theories of negligence, wantonness, and negligent entrustment. The *1035 negligent entrustment claim was voluntarily withdrawn prior to trial.
At trial, Lane and Treadway Trucking were granted directed verdicts on the issue of wantonness, at the close of Carter's case-in-chief. The court denied Lane and Treadway's motion for a directed verdict on the negligence claim, and the court submitted that claim to the jury. The jury returned a verdict in favor of Carter, assessing damages at $35,000.
Carter moved for a new trial, alleging inadequacy of the verdict. Specifically, he contended:
The court denied the motion, and Carter appealed.
Although Carter casts his issue in terms of whether the trial court erred in refusing to instruct the jury concerning the plaintiff's claim of wantonness, the essence of his argument is that there was sufficient evidence to allow the jury to decide on the issue of wantonness, an issue not presented to the trial court in his motion for new trial.
This court stated in Kirkpatrick v. Jones, 585 So. 2d 828 (Ala.1991), that a trial court cannot be held in error for failure to rule on a matter not presented to it or decided by it. See also Lowder Realty Co. v. Sabry, 542 So. 2d 1240 (Ala.1989). Therefore, Carter's failure to raise a sufficiency-of-the-evidence argument in his motion for new trial precludes any consideration of the merits of this issue on appeal.
This court recently set out the elements of wantonness in Smith v. Davis, 599 So. 2d 586 (Ala.1992):
A thorough review of the record reveals no substantial evidence of wantonness. Therefore, the judgment is affirmed.
AFFIRMED.
HORNSBY, C.J., and STEAGALL, KENNEDY and INGRAM, JJ., concur.