Title: Cloud v. Moon

State: alabama

Issuer: Alabama Supreme Court

Document:

273 So. 2d 196 (1973)
W. T. CLOUD, Ind. etc.
v.
Walter Vernon MOON.
SC 52.

Supreme Court of Alabama.
February 1, 1973.
*197 Inzer, Suttle, Inzer & Pruett, Gadsden, for appellant.
Burns, Carr & Shumaker, Gadsden, for appellee.
MERRILL, Justice.
This is an appeal from a judgment for the plaintiff-appellee in the amount of $20,785.00 against the defendant-appellant on a two-count complaint. A motion for a new trial was overruled.
The facts are essentially without dispute. At the time of the fire, appellee was a self-employed automobile mechanic with nearly twenty years experience. His shop was adjacent to his residence and was in a tin building with a floor of part concrete and part dirt. The only wood in the building was the lathing to hold the tin. Appellee's specialty was working on large trucks. He had previously worked for appellant and some months earlier had overhauled the motor on the truck that burned. Appellant was in the timber and pulpwood business and used large trucks to transport pulpwood from the forest to a paper mill.
Appellant contracted with appellee for appellee to overhaul the engine in one of appellant's trucks, a red International R-190. The truck was eleven years old and had been purchased second hand by appellant about a year before it burned. On the morning of March 14, 1969, appellee and his father took possession of the truck at appellant's place of business in Attalla. Appellee's father drove the truck to his son's garage about fifteen miles away, and appellee then took off the hood and fenders *198 and removed the engine. In the process of removing the engine, appellee disconnected the battery cable at the starter relay rather than at the battery post, taped the cable end and disconnected the fuel line from the fuel pump. The following morning, March 15, the engine was taken to Gadsden to have some machine shop work done on it and the engineless truck was left in the garage. Appellee testified that between 9:00 and 10:00 on the evening of March 15, he heard an explosion and discovered his garage on fire. The truck was destroyed by the fire as were several items of tools and equipment belonging to appellee.
Assignments of error 26-38 charge error in that the court permitted appellee to cross-examine his own witness, to impeach him as to alleged contradictory unsworn statements, and assignments 39 and 40 charge error in the admission of an alleged statement of the witness into evidence over strenuous objections.
The appellee had taken the deposition of the witness, Gordon Martin, on December 2, 1969, and later introduced it on the first trial of this case which began on September 30, 1970. The deposition was taken before the court reporter under Act No. 375, Acts of Alabama 1955, p. 901, listed in the 1958 Recompilation as Tit. 7, § 474(1) et seq. Appellee's counsel, Mr. Carr, was present as were Messrs. Suttle and Pruett, representing appellant. In that deposition, Martin testified that an International truck which he was driving caught on fire as a result of having been "cross-wired," but the same type International truck which burned in appellee's garage was not the same truck which had previously caught fire; that he had done repairs on both trucks and that the only electrical work that had been done on the truck that burned in Moon's garage was repairing a starter solenoid that had burned out and repairing the "flashing lights."
Prior to the taking of the deposition, Mr. Carr, of counsel for appellee, had taken a statement signed by the witness Martin in counsel's office on April 1, 1969, some two weeks after the fire at appellee's garage and long before the taking of the deposition.
On the second trial, which is the subject of this appeal, appellee called Martin as his witness and notified the court that he wished to cross-examine Martin as a witness. Many objections were overruled and finally the trial court allowed appellee's counsel to cross-examine his own witness. The record shows.
And after some discussion:
The trial court may, in its sound discretion, allow a party to ask leading questions when the witness, called by that party, is hostile to the party's cause. Louisville & N.R. Co. v. Grizzard, 238 Ala. 49, 189 So. 203, cert. denied 308 U.S. 603, 60 S. Ct. 140, 84 L. Ed. 504; Winchester v. State, 20 Ala.App. 243, 102 So. 535; Tit. 7, § 444, Code 1940. But we have not been cited to any case which permits a party to call a witness and immediately cross-examine him on the theory that he is a hostile witness.
There must be an avowed surprise before one's own witness may be subjected to cross-examination by the party calling him. Campbell v. Davis, 274 Ala. 555, 150 So. 2d 187; Alabama Power Co. v. Hall, 212 Ala. 638, 103 So. 867. Here, appellee could not have been surprised. The witness had been offered by the appellee at the first trial. A member of the firm employed *199 by appellee participated in the taking of the deposition at that time, appellee's counsel had a written statement signed by the witness which had been signed in the presence of appellee and Mr. Burns, the senior member of the firm representing appellee.
In his deposition, the witness testified that the International truck which he drove and which had caught fire because it was "cross-wired," was not the truck which burned at appellee's garage. The witness was not examined at that time as to the statement which counsel had previously secured from the witness. Under these conditions, there could not have been surprise to appellee or his counsel as to what the witness had previously sworn. They could reasonably take the position that he was hostile, but not that his hostility was a surprise. They did not claim surprise.
In Louisville & N. R. Co. v. Scott, 232 Ala. 284, 167 So. 572, this court said:
On the same point, in Foremost Dairies, Inc. v. Cutler, Fla.App., 212 So. 2d 37, it was said:
Finally, whether or not the testimony of the witness Martin was admissible, it could not be the basis of establishing liability of the defendant. McElroy, Law of Evidence in Alabama, 2nd Ed., Vol. 1, states in § 159.02(1):
Another statement of this principle is found in 58 Am.Jur., Witnesses, § 799, p. 445:
In Lewis v. State, 44 Ala.App. 319, 208 So. 2d 228, it was said:
In Eisenberg v. United States, (5th Cir.), 273 F.2d 127, it was said:
Also in Eisenberg, supra, the following appears: "`[The document used to refresh recollection] does not itself go before the jury, unless the other side puts it in.' Portman v. American Home Products Corp., 2 Cir., 1953, 201 F.2d 847, 850.
"In no case do we find that a statement used by a party to refresh the recollection of his witness is admissible by that party. * * *"
It follows that the trial court erred in permitting the plaintiff to cross-examine his own witness, and also in admitting the written statement of the witness into evidence.
Count A alleged that appellee was engaged in the business of making mechanical repairs on trucks and that appellant contracted with him to make certain repairs on the engine of one of his trucks; that at the time appellant delivered possession of the truck to appellee, appellant knew that the truck was in a dangerous condition, likely to burn or explode at any time, and that he negligently delivered possession to appellee without warning him of its dangerous condition; and that on March 15, 1969, the truck caught fire and exploded and destroyed appellee's garage, equipment, tools, etc. Count B is substantially the same as Count A. The pleas were in short by consent.
The issues formed by the pleadings imposed upon appellee the burden of proving, (1) that the truck was in such a dangerous condition when it was turned over to appellee that it was likely to burn or explode; (2) that the dangerous condition was known to appellant and unknown to appellee when the truck was delivered to appellee; (3) that appellant negligently failed to warn appellee of this known dangerous condition; and (4) that the damages claimed proximately resulted from the failure of appellant to warn appellee of the known dangerous condition.
This case is one of first impression in this court. It differs from Penton v. Favors, *201 262 Ala. 262, 78 So. 2d 278, in that there the bailor loaned bailee an automobile to use temporarily, while here the bailor, a non-expert owner, put the truck in the hands of an expert bailee for the overhaul of the truck engine.
The rule in cases like the one before us has been established in many jurisdictions. In 14 Blashfield Automobile Law and Practice, 476.41, p. 460, we read:
Blashfield cites Rice v. Allen, Mo., 309 S.W.2d 629; Stroud v. Southern Oil Transp. Co., 215 N.C. 726, 3 S.E.2d 297; Brown v. Hudson, 50 Tenn.App. 658, 363 S.W.2d 505; Cornett v. Hardy, Tex.Civ.App., 241 S.W.2d 186; Liberski v. Jonas, 18 Wis.2d 127, 118 N.W.2d 192; Anderson v. London Guarantee & Acc. Co., La.App., 36 So. 2d 741; Knowles v. Jenney, 157 Me. 392, 173 A.2d 347; Varas v. James Stewart & Co., 223 Mo.App. 385, 17 S.W.2d 651. See also 61A C.J.S. Motor Vehicles § 741, p. 689, citing Jones v. Bush, 202 Va. 752, 120 S.E.2d 382.
In Varas v. James Stewart & Co., 223 Mo.App. 385, 17 S.W.2d 651, the court said:
Assignments of error 3 through 11 charge that the court erred in refusing to give the affirmative charge, with or without hypothesis as to both counts and as to each count separately.
We start with the rule that in civil cases, the question must go to the jury if the evidence furnishes a scintilla in support of the theory; and in considering the propriety of the affirmative charge, we review the tendencies of the evidence most favorable to the plaintiff, regardless of any view we may have as to the weight of the evidence; and we must allow such reasonable inferences as the jury were free to draw, not inferences which we think the more probable. Orange v. Shannon, 284 Ala. 202, 224 So. 2d 236; Alabama Power Co. v. Guy, 281 Ala. 583, 206 So. 2d 594. So we look for evidence in the record to support the four allegations which we have stated the appellee must prove in order to be successful.
The undisputed evidence was that the solenoid switch was removed when the appellee removed the engine from the truck; that the driver who had driven the truck six days a week for six or seven months just preceding the fire had never had any trouble with the starter, the lights or the battery during that time; that the only trouble was that the engine began using oil and he recommended that the engine be overhauled. The appellee testified that he had once repaired a battery cable on the truck by taping it up; that when he removed the engine the day of the fire he disconnected the fuel line and left it hanging without taping or plugging it; and that he started to disconnect the cables from the battery posts but did not because two battery posts were loose. Whether or not appellant had had any labor problems is not relevant in this case. The only duty owed by appellant was to warn of any known dangerous condition pertaining to the truck. Labor problems are not mechanical components of the truck.
Thus, it appears from the undisputed evidence that for the five months next preceding the fire, the truck was not in a dangerous condition and that no dangerous condition was known to the appellant for him to report to appellee.
Two other matters require mention. One was that there was evidence that one of the caps on one of the gasoline tanks had a wooden plug wrapped with a rag in the vent in the cap. This may or may not have been safe, but if the expert appellee knew of the condition before he took possession of the truck, there was no duty to tell him of the rag-wrapped wooden peg. The record shows the following questions and answers while appellee was testifying:
The other matter is that appellee's expert testified that in his opinion the cause of the fire was "either the battery or the battery cable." There was no evidence that the electrical system was dangerous or unsafe after the last repairs had been made on the truck.
In McClinton v. McClinton, 258 Ala. 542, 63 So. 2d 594, damages were sought for the destruction by fire of a garage apartment building which it is alleged originated in an automobile parked in the garage portion of the building. There was considerable evidence in that case that the ignition system and the electrical wiring in the car had given trouble. The lights had gone out from time to time and the dimmer switch did not work at times. The evidence was undisputed that all the defects had been repaired about a week before the fire.
There, the repairs had been made about a week before the fire; here, they had been made more than five months before the fire. The court held that the defendant was entitled to the "general affirmative charge" and quoted the following from earlier cases:
In Viking Motor Lodge, Inc. v. American Tobacco Co., 286 Ala. 112, 237 So. 2d 632, it was said:
We hold that appellant was entitled to the affirmative charge without hypothesis because the complaint was not supported by any legal evidence that the truck was in such a dangerous condition that it was likely to burn or explode when turned over to appellee; and that appellant knew of any dangerous condition; and that appellant negligently failed to warn appellee of a known dangerous condition, or that the damages claimed by appellee proximately resulted from the failure of the appellant to warn appellee of the known dangerous condition of the truck.
For the errors noted, the judgment is reversed and the cause is remanded.
Reversed and remanded.
HEFLIN, C.J., and HARWOOD, MADDOX and McCALL, JJ., concur.