Court Opinion

ID: 9648570
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 14:27:02.773977+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:12:02.999133
License: Public Domain

On Motion for Rehearing or to Transfer to Court en Banc
 Defendant reargues physical facts as to the position and condition of the vehicles which we consider as not conclusive on liability but as matters to argue to the jury. Defendant further says our decision is based on a mere guess by plaintiff that its truck was 60 feet away when the streetcar reached the middle of the street. What *645defendant overlooks is that it was for the jury to decide whether this testimony of plaintiff should he rejected as a mere guess or whether it should be accepted as sufficiently accurate and credible to authorize finding this as a fact. The jury was not bound to accept defendant’s version of the facts. See Reimers v. Connet Lumber Co., Mo.Sup., 269 S.W.2d 161; Machens v. Machens, Mo.Sup., 263 S.W.2d 724, loc.cit. 734. Defendant’s further contention that this so called “guess” conflicts with physical facts is based on its interpretation of plaintiff’s testimony as to the speed and distance of the truck when plaintiff first saw it. Defendant says this distance is fixed by the position of the truck in relation to Yale Avenue (as it went north, to the east of its intersection with Wise Avenue where it came from the south) but defendant takes the distance from the west curb of this street whereas plaintiff said the truck was “on the east side of Yale.” The accuracy of the estimates of speed and distance was for the jury to decide and they could take the view most favorable to plaintiff. They could do likewise as to whether they believed the truck was traveling near the curb or the middle of the street and whether the truck could have been turned to the left in a distance of 60 feet, other matters reargued by defendant. If the truck could have been stopped in less than 60 feet, surely it could have been turned to the left in that distance.
Defendant further says the opinion applies two conflicting rules of law to a single factual situation. It says the zone of peril of plaintiff (not oblivious) was correctly stated in considering defendant’s right to a directed verdict but that in ruling on its contention (that the language of instruction No. 1 quoted in the opinion improperly extended the danger zone) we took a completely contradictory position in stating: “It was properly left to the jury to determine where, after the streetcar started to turn to the north, the position of imminent peril arose.” Defendant apparently construes this as meaning that the jury could find the zone of peril commenced at the beginning of the curve when tne streetcar started to turn north. However, we think the opinion is clear that it could not have begun, and the instruction did not mean it began, at that point when the streetcar started to turn north. On the contrary, the instruction meant and the jury could properly find only that at some point closer to the place of collision, after the streetcar started turning north, plaintiff came into a position of imminent peril; namely, the point at which it should have become apparent that the streetcar would not stop before reaching the path of the truck. Of course, the exact point where this should have become apparent (to a driver exercising the highest degree of care) was for the jury to determine from the evidence it believed. In this connection, defendant says that our statement, that “it is the reasonable appearances of the situation that imposes the duty to act”, means that in ruling on the instruction we have considered this matter of imminent peril as though plaintiff was oblivious. However, the rule of reasonable appearances of the situation imposing the duty to act applies to situations where one is not oblivious as well as where he is. Thus the reasonable appearance that a person seeing the approach of a vehicle, cannot stop short of its path would certainly impose a duty on the driver of the vehicle to act. (For example, a child on a sled, unable to stop, coasting closely toward the path of an automobile.) Defendant recognized this by offering instruction No. 2, given by the Court, which said: “there was no duty upon the operator of defendant’s truck to stop his truck, swerve or turn his truck to the left, until it became apparent to him, or by the exercise of the highest degree of care should have become apparent to him, that the street car which the plaintiff was operating was being driven from a position of safety and into a position of imminent peril of collision with defendant’s truck.” Certainly this meant apparent from the reasonable appearances of the situation. We find no merit in defendant’s reargument of its contention that instruction No. 1 should have required a finding as to whether or *646not the streetcar was stopped before the collision.
Defendant’s motion for rehearing or to transfer to the Court en Banc is overruled.
All concur.