Case Name: Gilven CHRIST, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. STATE of Louisiana, through the DEPARTMENT OF HIGHWAYS, Defendant-Appellant
Court: Louisiana Court of Appeal
Jurisdiction: Louisiana
Decision Date: 1964-02-18
Citations: 161 So. 2d 322
Docket Number: No. 977
Parties: Gilven CHRIST, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. STATE of Louisiana, through the DEPARTMENT OF HIGHWAYS, Defendant-Appellant.
Judges: Before TATE, SAVOY, HOOD, CUL-PEPPER and CARROL L. SPELL, JJ.
Reporter: Southern Reporter, Second Series
Volume: 161
Pages: 322–334

Head Matter:
Gilven CHRIST, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. STATE of Louisiana, through the DEPARTMENT OF HIGHWAYS, Defendant-Appellant.
No. 977.
Court of Appeal of Louisiana. Third Circuit.
Feb. 18, 1964.
Rehearing Denied March 11, 1964.
Writ Refused May 4, 1964.
D. Ross Banister, Philip K. Jones, Norman L. Sisson, Thomas A. Warner, Jr., William J. Doran, Jr., by William J. Doran, Jr., Baton Rouge, for defendant-appellant.
J. Nilas Young, Eunice, and Frugé & Foret, by Jack C. Frugé, Ville Platte, for plaintiff-appellee.
Before TATE, SAVOY, HOOD, CUL-PEPPER and CARROL L. SPELL, JJ.

Opinion:
TATE, Judge.
This is a personal inj ury suit. The plaintiff motorist claims damages allegedly caused by insufficient warning of a repair-obstruction in the traveled lanes of a highway maintained and repaired by the State Department of Highways. The defendant highway department appeals from judgment awarding recovery to the plaintiff.
The accident occurred in a semi-rural area within the incorporated limits of Basile in Evangeline Parish. It occurred on Highway 190, one of the most heavily traveled highways in the state, which at the place of the accident was only a two-lane thoroughfare. The speed limit at the place of the accident was SO mph for trucks and 60 mph for passenger vehicles.
The accident happened at about 8:00 P.M., after dark. It was caused when the plaintiff motorist ran off the highway upon being suddenly confronted with a barricade across his path. He was driving a pickup truck at the time, and thus the applicable speed limit as to him was 50 mph.
The principal question of this appeal is whether the defendant Department was negligent in failing to provide adequate warnings of the excavation in the highway pavement and of the consequent obstruction to traffic in that lane created by its repair activities earlier that day.
The plaintiff, who had been out of town all the day during which the repair activities had taken place, testified that, as he approached the scene of the accident, he was met by a stream of four or five cars followed by a big truck. The cars had their headlights on dim, but the lights of the big truck were "very bright" and therefore blinded him. Tr. 79. The plaintiff's own lights were on dim.
Just as the bright-staring lights of the big truck passed him, the plaintiff for the first time saw the barricade in his path. At the legal speed of 40-45 mph at which he was approaching, the plaintiff was unable to avoid striking the barricade except by cutting quickly to his left, as a result of which his truck overturned and he suffered very severe foot injuries.
In support of its defense that the highway obstruction was adequately signed, the state produced three state employees.
Two of them testified that not only were barricades placed on both sides of the highway excavation with four kerosene flares (two on each side) on the ground in front of each barricade, but that approximately 200 feet on both sides of the excavation a sign "Men Working" with a flare and a flag was additionally placed, and that further yet another sign "Slow Road Repairs" was placed between 800 and 1000 feet from the barricades. (These highway personnel, incidentally, were from an out-of-parish crew, which had worked for just that one day in Evangeline Parish and which had completed its share of the repairs at the site by the end of the day of the accident, before leaving for their own homes in another parish.)
However, the two investigating police officers testified positively that no pre-warn-ing signs at all had been placed at the site, and that the only warning to oncoming traffic of the obstruction in the traffic lane consisted of two barricades placed at either end of the excavation, with one pot-type kerosene flare lit near the highway shoulder in front of the barricade at the side of the excavation from which the plaintiff approached, and with two other such flares (one near the center of the highway and one near the shoulder) on the far side of the other barricade on the opposite side of the excavation from which the plaintiff was approaching. This positive testimony was corroborated by the testimony of four other witnesses, three of whom had traveled on the highway towards B asile in the same direction as the plaintiff but earlier that same evening.
These latter witnesses further positively testified that the barricade was almost un-distinguishable, even without the distraction to vision of opposite-bound traffic to oncoming motorists approaching the scene, especially because the lights of the kerosene flares, which rested on the roadway, burned so low that they served as little if any warning to approaching traffic that there was a barricade at the site. In fact, two of the witnesses had remarked to companions at the time, of the extreme hazard to oncoming traffic by lack of warning, and one of them had missed striking the barricade only by a sudden application of brakes.
One of these witnesses testified positively that the saw-horse barricades had no reflectors or reflector-type paint on them; he is corroborated in this by the difficulty observed by other motorists in distinguishing the barricade obstructing the traveled lane of the highway, as well as by the plaintiff's own testimony. Although it is suggested that reflective paint was used on the barricades, actually the Department's only witness as to this stated that he "didn't know", if that were so, although he thought it was. Tr. 172.
We find no error in the trial court's having accepted the strong, detailed, and convincing testimony of the investigating police officers and the other witnesses for the plaintiff to the effect that the warnings to which the highway employees testified, were not in actual fact placed at the scene of this temporary excavation when they left the scene at 4:00 P.M.
It is natural that the highway employees might tend to remember that such was done, in accordance with applicable regulations, especially since they usually did it and also were subject to discharge for failure to provide adequate warnings (Tr. 174). We do not think, however, that the trial court was required to accept the positive testimony of these employees, in the face of the equally positive and most convincing testimony of the witnesses who testified to the contrary for the plaintiff. Further, under the well-settled jurisprudence, the evaluation of the credibility of witnesses is primarily within the province of the trier of fact, not of the appellate tribunal.
We find equally little difficulty in finding, under the circumstances proved, that the Department was negligent in failing to provide adequate safeguards and warnings to oncoming traffic, to warn such traffic of the most dangerous obstruction to traffic created by entirely blocking one of the two lanes of this much-traveled public highway.
No hard and fast rule can be laid down as to the type of warning or barricade that should be erected by the highway authority to warn motorists of a hazard in the highway, but where a barricade or warning is necessary for the protection of motorists it should be of such size or nature as is commensurate with the danger. Reeves v. State, La.App. 2 Cir., 80 So.2d 206 (certiorari granted to consider other issues: see 228 La. 653, 83 So.2d 889 and 232 La. 116, 94 So.2d 1); Rosier v. State, La.App. 2 Cir, 50 So.2d 31.
We think the general rule of law applicable to this case is correctly set out in 40' C.J.S. Highways § 254b, page 293, as follows :
"In general the duty imposed on the highway authorities is to maintain the highways in a condition reasonably safe for travel, having in view the probable traffic and the character of the road and the use reasonably to be anticipated. So, in determining whether a highway is in a reasonable state of repair, its location and character and the extent of travel thereon are to be considered."
Also, in 60 C.J.S. Motor Vehicles § 192, page 530, it is stated:
"While the exercise of reasonable caje by highway authorities toward motorists may require a placing of signs warning of dangerous conditions, as where there are obstructions or excavations in the way, or the highway terminates abruptly, or a bridge has been destroyed, warning signs need not be maintained at places which do not present an extraordinary condition or unusual hazard, as, for example, at curves of an ordinary character in the highway. Warnings or notices need not be given where the physical facts give sufficient warning of the danger. Where a barrier gives ample and timely warning of the dangerous condition of the road, there is no duty devolving on those in charge of the highway to post notices of the condition of the road some distance therefrom. In determining what is reasonable warning, the place at which the danger exists, the nature of the road, and the general situation and circumstances surrounding it are to be taken into consideration, as are also the kind of travel and the speed at which vehicles will probably travel on the road. " (Italics ours.)
Aside from the dimness of the flares and the obscurity of the barricade constituting insufficient warning of the obstruction to traffic created by the road excavation, we think that most culpable is the failure under the circumstances to set out pre-warning flares or signals at a reasonable distance in advance of the obstruction, in order to alert oncoming traffic to slow their approach to this hazardous obstruction to passage on this through highway.
As noted in the quotation from Corpus Juris Secundum above, there may be no such duty where a barricade itself with nearby flares does give "ample and timely warning of the dangerous condition of the road." Thus, in Sapir v. Sewerage & Water Bd., La.App. 4 Cir., 127 So.2d 283, a case much relied upon by the appellant, the municipality was not held liable for inadequately signing a mud-pile in a city street, a half-block from a traffic semaphore signal which slowed traffic down, and where there were street-lights within 125 feet and where at the speed of 25 mph applicable the obstruction should clearly have been seen by normal traffic in time to stop.
However, what type of signing is adequate and whether pre-warning and detour signs are required depends on the circumstances of each obstruction site, for "the warnings and means of protection should be of a size and nature commensurate with the danger that lies ahead." Reeves v. State, cited above, at 80 So.2d 211. In the Reeves case, the court noted that not only should a complete barricade have been erected and properly lighted, but also that warning and detour signs should have been set out and maintained. The court specifically commented on the inadequacy under the circumstances of a pre-warning sign "Stop, Slow Ahead" some 1,170 feet in front of the highway hazard, which did not suitably alert motorists to the hazard ahead.
The present situation here, likewise, is very different than the city street site in the Sapir case relied upon by the appellant. We are in the present case concerned with a heavily-traveled through highway, with speed limits of 60 mph for passenger vehicles and of 50 mph for trucks.
In the highway situation present in the instant case, thus, at the place of the accident, it was reasonable to expect that the headlights from the opposing streams of traffic should to some extent interfere with the nighttime powers of observation of the oncoming motorists. It was reasonable to anticipate that alone, pot-flares set on the roadway bed, might not easily be discernible as a warning, when viewed by an approaching motorist in the context of similar-seeming headlights of oncoming traffic, flickering with the movement of the vehicles.
It was likewise to be expected that some of the oncoming traffic (such as the plaintiff) might have their headlights on low beam with a minimum visibility of ISO feet ahead permissible by law, LSA-R.S. 32:321 (2). Further, it was reasonably to be expected that on occasions there would be inability to observe the barricades unless close thereto, through the obscuring of vision ahead by preceding traffic, which might turn off the highway or suddenly pull around the obstruction to reveal it for the first time to a following motorist approaching the scene, as well as by the interference with vision through the headlights of opposite-bound traffic.
Likewise, the greater distances within which it is required to bring to a stop high-speed vehicles, traveling within legal limits and confronted with an emergency not reasonably foreseeable, should be taken into consideration, especially since on a two-lane highway such as the present an approaching vehicle often could not swerve around the barricade because of opposing traffic in the other lane.
We realize that standard motor vehicle braking charts are not accurate guides as to the performance of any given vehicle in a specific situation, since stoppii% distances may vary greatly with individual braking efficiencies, reaction times, and braking surfaces. Baker, Practical use of Speed Charts, 2 Defense Law Journal 156 (1957). See, e. g., Am.Jur.2d Desk Book, Doc. Nos. 174 (p. 454), 175 (455). Nevertheless, these charts indicate that standard stopping distances, including reaction time, of vehicles traveling at 50 mph may vary from 166 to 287 feet, and at 60 mph may vary between 226 and 360 feet; for instance, the minimum legal efficiency of brakes on a pick-up truck, such as the plaintiff was driving, is shown by these charts to have required a standard stopping distance of 287 feet (including 177 feet of braking distance, plus reaction time) at 50 mph, the legal speed limit for it at the site.
The duty of the highway authorities to provide adequate warnings of highway obstructions must also be viewed in the light of the right of motorists to presume and to act under the presumption that the way ahead is reasonably clear for ordinary traffic, so that motorists are not required to be constantly on the lookout for unknown or latent dangers when there is nothing to put them on guard. Snodgrass v. Certanni, 299 La. 915, 87 So.2d 127.
Adequate signing sufficient to protect the traveling public, therefore, should reasonably have taken into consideration such factors, which indicate that adequate pre-warn-ings to alert oncoming traffic were required under the present circumstances. (As a matter of fact, the highway witnesses who testified that they were supposed to put out these pre-warnings in advance of the hazard-site, do not deny, but instead seem to corroborate this to be a requisite safety precaution under the circumstances.)
We therefore affirm the trial court's ruling that the defendant Department was negligent in having failed to provide adequate warnings of the size and nature commensurate with the hazard and sufficient to warn reasonably prudent motorists of the dangerous obstruction ahead in the complete lane reserved for traffic proceeding in that direction.
Contributory Negligence.
The plaintiff's recovery cannot be denied by reason of contributory negligence, since this issue is not before us.
The defendant's formal answer pleads only that the sole cause of the accident was the plaintiff's negligence in certain specified respects; it does not affirmatively plead contributory negligence, as required by LSA-C.C.P. Art. 1005, nor did the defendant amend its answer so as to plead this defense, LSA-C.C.P. Art. 1154.
The jurisprudence uniformly holds that the defense of contributory negligence is not sufficiently pleaded by allegations merely that the plaintiff's negligence was the sole cause of the accident: Washington Fire & Marine Ins. Co. v. Firemans Fund Insurance Co., La.App. 4 Cir., 130 So.2d 699; Horn v. Lee, La.App. 2 Cir., 68 So.2d 238, certiorari denied; Althans v. Toye Bros. Yellow Cab Co., La.App. Orl., 191 So. 717. See also Landrum v. United States F. & G. Co., La.App. 3 Cir., 151 So.2d 701. Further, since evidence to such effect was already admissible under the pleadings, the pleadings cannot be deemed enlarged to include such plea by reason of LSA-C.C.P. Art. 1154, which pertains to the trial without objection of unpleaded issues. See Meyer v. Rein, La.App. Orl., 18 So.2d 69, certiorari denied.
Quantum.
As a result of the accident, the plaintiff suffered multiple severe fractures and dislocations of the bone in the left foot, as well as a severe crushing injury to the muscles, soft tissue, blood vessels and tendons of this foot. The attending orthopedist characterized the plaintiff's injury as "a very severe foot injury" and estimated that, after treatment, the plaintiff would be left with a permanent 30% functional disability of the ankle and foot, with additional residual factors of pain and swelling persisting indefinitely. The plaintiff is permanently disabled from prolonged weight-bearing. The injuries were extremely painful at the time of and following the accident, and they will result in pain and discomfort indefinitely into the future.
This medical testimony is uncontradicted.
Under these circumstances, the award of $20,000 general damages made by the trial court for the plaintiff's past and future pain and suffering is not manifestly excessive as constituting an abuse of the large discretion of the trier of fact in such matters. See, e. g., Howard v. Early Chevrolet-Poniac-Cadillac, Inc., La.App. 2 Cir., ISO So.2d 309; Broussard v. Savant Lbr. Co., La.App. 3 Cir., 134 So.2d 369; Fullilove v. United States Casualty Company of New York, La.App. 2 Cir., 129 So.2d 816; Hidalgo v. Dupuy, La.App. 1 Cir., 122 So. 2d 639; Girouard v. Houston Fire & Cas. Ins. Co., La.App. 1 Cir., 85 So.2d 664.
We agree with the trial court that a loss of future earnings was insufficiently proved by the plaintiff, although he was disabled by his injuries from securing heavier employment upon the labor market. The plaintiff is a self-employed bulldozer contractor who owns his equipment. Despite the pain and discomfort he suffers thereby, he returned to work operating one of his bulldozers about eight months after the accident.
Aside from well-proven special damages, the trial court further awarded the plaintiff $10,500 for his loss of earnings during the eight-month period he was under his doctor's care and before which he did not return to bulldozer work (according to his own testimony).
The plaintiff was a self-employed bulldozer contractor. He owned two bulldozers, one of which he operated himself in the performance of his contracts. Each of these machines earned $12.50 per hour when working, and the plaintiff estimated that he had average gross earnings of $3,000 less expenses of about half this amount, or an average income of about $1,500 a month.
The plaintiff testified that during the eight months of his disability he had, due to the difficulty in moving, being on crutches part of the time, etc., been unable to contact prospects for jobs; nor, due to his disability, had he been able to perform the heavy work himself. Therefore, he said, his machines had earned only $1,-500 during this period.
The trial court based its award for loss of eight months' earnings upon this testimony of the plaintiff alone. The testimony was not corroborated by any written records or any other substantiation of the plaintiff's testimony by any other witness that he had not been able to run his business during the while and had in fact suffered a loss of earning such as he estimated.
While in some instances the trial court's affirmance of a loss of earnings based on the plaintiff's testimony alone has been sustained where it is justified by the evidence (see White v. Robbins, La.App. 3 Cir., 153 So.2d 165; Stevens v. Dowden, La.App. 3 Cir., 125 So.2d 234), in the present situation the plaintiff's own uncorroborated estimate of his loss of earnings does not, in our opinion, sufficiently prove his loss of earnings in the amount awarded, under the established rule that " 'an uncorroborated general estimate by a plaintiff as to his loss of earnings or profits is not sufficient proof of such loss, where corroborative evidence is shown to be available and is not produced' ", Jobe v. Credeur, La.App. 3 Cir., 125 So.2d 487. See Stevens v. Dowden, cited above, at 125 So.2d 237, for discussion and citation of other cases in this line of jurisprudence.
The situation before us now is very similar to that in Jobe v. Credeur, cited above. There, we disallowed recovery of special damages of an alleged loss of income by a self-employed drilling contractor, who attempted to prove such loss by his own estimates alone, although we did allow recovery for his disability during that period.
As in the situation in Jobe v. Credeur, we do not doubt that here the loss of services of the owner of a one-man business has economic value and may be compensated in damages, if properly proved. On the other hand, in such an instance, the owner's income may derive from the use of his equipment and from his management activities, many of the latter of which may be performed by telephone or in a car,. even though the injured owner himself may not physically be able to perform his heavier duties — in the present example, for instance, it is not shown why the plaintiff contractor could not have minimized his estimated alleged loss of earnings by hiring another bulldozer operator to perform the physical part of his work, maintaining supervision of his business as a going operation by visiting the job scene in his car, securing other contracts by telephone or car, etc.
We do think, however, that the medical evidence definitely indicates that the plaintiff was totally disabled from performing even this much of work for at least one month following the injury, when he was in severe pain and in his bed, as well as unable substantially to attend to his business for a greater period. When there is a legal right to recover and damages are definitely proven, although the amount is uncertain, the courts have the reasonable discretion to assess same, based on all the facts and circumstances of the case. White v. Robbins and Jobe v. Credeur, cited above. We will therefore reduce to $2,500 the trial court's award for loss of earnings during the plaintiff's eight months of disability to operate his own bulldozer, feeling this amount at least is adequately proven by plaintiff's testimony, accepted by the trial court, and by the surrounding circumstances.
In summary, we disallow $8,000 of the amount awarded by the trial court for loss of earnings (reducing the award for this item to $2,500), and we affirm the trial award of $20,000 for general damages for physical pain and suffering, and of $1,771.51 other special damages.
Decree.
For the foregoing reasons, the award of the trial court is reduced from Thirty-two Thousand Two Hundred Seventy-one and 51/100 ($32,271.51) Dollars to Twenty-four Thousand Two Hundred Seventy-one and 51/100 ($24,271.51) Dollars; as thus amended, the judgment of the trial court is affirmed in all other respects.
Amended and affirmed.
. Tlie minimum legal efficiency for brakes of various types of motor vehicles is set forth at LSA-R.S. 32:342, Act 310 of 1962. (Under the prior enactment, a lesser braking efficiency was required, LSA-R.S. 32:284, Act 286 of 1938.)
Thus, for example, passenger vehicles are required by the 1962 enactment to have brakes which at 20 mph will stop them 25 feet from the time brakes are applied, while non-passenger single-unit vehicles of loss than 10,000 pounds gross weight are required to have brakes which at 20 mph will stop them 30 feet from the time that the brakes are applied— i. e., neither of these minimum stopping distances including reaction time.
The "Uniform Table of Driver Stopping Distances" set forth at Am.Jur.2d Desk Book, Doc. No. 176, p. 456, has stopping distance charts based on brakes having efficiencies of the legal minimum braking distances at 20 mph as set forth in the present Louisiana braking-efficiency regulation, LSA-R.S. 32:342, 1962, referred to above.
This Uniform Table shows that passenger vehicles having such braking efficiency have a standard stopping distance at 50 mpb of 258 feet (148 feet braking distance, plus reaction distance) ; and at 60 mpb of 360 feet (228 feet braking distance, plus reaction distance).
Single unit vebicles of less than 10,000 pounds gross weight, such as the present plaintiff's pick-up truck, are shown by the Uniform Table to have a standard stopping distance at 50 mph of 287 feet (177 feet braking distance plus reaction distance). This table further shows that larger vehicles, such as also were subject to a speed limit of 50 mph at the place of the accident, had standard stopping distances of 366 feet and 430 feet.
The table at 9 Blashfield, Automobile Law and Practice, Section 6237, p. 413, is based upon a braking efficiency of a stop in 18 feet at 20 mph — i. e., a greater efficiency than is legally required by LSA-R.S. 32:342, 1962. This shows total stopping distances, including reaction time, of 166 feet at 50 mph and of 226 feet at 60 mph.
See also charts set forth at 2 Defense Law Journal 173-178 (1957), 14 Tul.L. Rev. 503 (1940), Lawyer's Motor Vehicle Speed Chart (International Enterprises, 1950), and Driver's Guide of Louisiana Department of Public Safety (1957) at p. 23.