Court Opinion

ID: 9768895
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 13:54:43.003739+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:30:48.645588
License: Public Domain

HYDE, Chief Justice
(dissenting).
I respectfully dissent from the principal opinion adopted in this case as the opinion of the Court. I think it should be noted that the adopted opinion relies on cases from other states that are in conflict with our decision en banc in McClanahan v. St. Louis Public Service Co., 363 Mo. 500, 251 S.W.2d 704, 707. In the McClanahan case, a boy was clinging to handholds on the outside of a streetcar and it was alleged that the operator, knowing of his position of peril, accelerated the speed of the car, violently jerking it, causing the boy to be thrown from the car and injured. The St. Louis Court of Appeals held these facts justified submission under the humanitarian rule (McClanahan v. St. Louis Public Service Co., 242 S.W.2d 265) but transferred the case here. We held: “Plaintiff could not have been in a position of peril, that is, *14in imminent peril, as contemplated by the humanitarian rule, until the motorman accelerated and jerked the streetcar.” We further held that, thereafter, it was too late for the operation of the humanitarian rule. We said, while the jury could have reasonably found that the'act of the operator was either primary negligence or wilful and wanton negligence,' “[I]f the defendant’s conduct was antecedent to the time plaintiff was in imminent peril, and if the effect of defendant’s conduct was immediate in causing plaintiff’s injury, or if when plaintiff first was in imminent peril defendant did not thereafter have time to avert the casualty, there was no room for the application of the humanitarian rule.” Citing also Blaser v. Coleman, Banc, 358 Mo. 157, 213 S.W.2d 420; Smith v. Siedhoff, Mo.Sup., Banc, 209 S.W.2d 233, in each of which the plaintiff therein also was injured almost immediately after the act of the defendant which was claimed to have created his imminent peril.
Prather’s Adm’r v. Allen, 291 Ky. 353, 164 S.W.2d 402; Richardson v. State, 203 Md. 426, 101 A.2d 213, 44 A.L.R.2d 231; and Tenney v. Enkeball, 62 Ariz. 416, 158 P.2d 519; on which the principal opinion herein relies, are all cases in which a person .was riding on the running board or fender of a .car and was injured by falling from it, because of the subsequent movements of the car. In holding a humanitarian.’or last clear chance case was made, on the basis of the plaintiff being in a position of imminent peril before he was thrown off, they are directly in conflict with McClanahan v. St. Louis Public Service Co., supra, as well as Blaser v. Coleman, supra; Smith v. Siedhoff, supra, and other cases in which we have followed these same well-settled principles as to the application of our humanitarian rule. As pointed out in the McClanahan case, conduct of a driver which disregards the safety of a person in an exposed dangerous situation on the side of a vehicle may be wilful and wanton conduct which would afford a basis for a negligent plaintiff to recover. I believe it would have been proper to permit recovery on the basis of wilful and wanton negligence, in several of these cases from other states cited in the principal opinion, but I think they have confused the humanitarian or last chance rule with the wilful and wanton negligence rule. The Texas case cited in the principal opinion, Neman v. Knight, Tex.Civ.App., 227 S.W.2d 606, really allowed recovery on the basis of wilful and wanton negligence, in increasing speed of a truck when a boy on a bicycle was holding onto it. My view is that the principal opinion, by citing with approval these cases from other states which have followed different views from ours concerning the humanitarian rule, fails to recognize that they are in conflict with our law as stated in the McClanahan case, and the others of this court announcing the same principles; and that is one of the reasons I think it is unsound in applying the humanitarian rule to the situation in this case.
It is further my view that the humanitarian rule only applies when the plaintiff’s peril from a defendant’s vehicle is created by his own act or by the act of a person other than its driver. Usually it is created by the plaintiff’s negligence; and the Restatement of Torts limits the last chance rule to that. Restatement of Torts, Secs. 479-480. However, it could be caused by the act of a third person, such as pushing the plaintiff off the sidewalk in front of an approaching car. Of course, the primary purpose of the humanitarian rule was to relieve plaintiff from the defense of contributory negligence, when he was in a position of imminent peril caused by his own negligence, by placing a duty on the driver of a vehicle, from which he was in danger, to avoid striking plaintiff if he could do so by the exercise of due care. It seems to me to be an unwarranted extension of the humanitarian rule (and one that will add great confusion to our law) to attempt to apply it to a situation where the plaintiff is riding as a guest in the defendant’s automobile. In this case, a humanitarian negligence submission was completely urmeces-*15sary, and in fact was unduly restrictive, because there was no claim of any contributory negligence on the part of plaintiff and he could have had a better case for recovery on primary negligence which could have been shown by acts of negligence prior to the last point at which it would have been possible for defendant to have stopped or swerved before reaching the point of collision.
I think the inapplicability of the humanitarian rule, in this case, is shown by the fact that plaintiff and defendant were at all times in the same amount of peril, sitting together on the same seat. Defendant was at all times creating just as much peril for himself as he was for plaintiff. Was defendant guilty of humanitarian negligence against himself ? Do we now have a new rule of contributory humanitarian negligence? To illustrate this suppose a defendant drives his car into a tree at the side of the road instead of into another car, would his guest have a submissible humanitarian case on the theory that the driver could have stopped or swerved after he was moving toward the tree and failed to do so? I think this demonstrates that a position of peril of being struck by the vehicle operated by the defendant (not danger to defendant himself and a passenger from driving his car against another object) is essential to the applicability of the humanitarian rule and therefore I do not think this rule can properly be extended to' cases of a guest riding in a car which is, driven into a collision with another car or object, because I would classify such conduct as primary negligence. In this case, plaintiffs theory of peril was peril into which he was being taken by the active negligence of defendant in driving his car into collision with another car. Such peril was being created by the driver as he moved toward the other car. It is my view that it is primary and not humanitarian negligence thus to take another person into such peril, because surely it is primary negligence to create such peril. Furthermore, even that peril of plaintiff, being created by defendant, did not entirely depend upon the acts of the defendant herein, because it could have been eliminated by action of the driver of the other car, and so was peril partly due to an instrumentality that defendant did not control.
Moreover, in this case, plaintiff seems to recognize that he was not in a position of peril required to make the humanitarian rule applicable because his main instruction did not actually submit that plaintiff was in a position of imminent peril but instead that both automobiles “were in imminent peril of striking and colliding with each other and injuring the plaintiff.’’ This instruction only submitted that plaintiff was a passenger in defendant Nicholson’s car and seems to assume that this placed plaintiff in a position of imminent peril without, specifically requiring such a finding as to plaintiff but significantly as to both automobiles. (Submitting that defendant “could have seen the said automobiles and the plaintiff in said position of imminent peril.”) Perhaps it could be held that plaintiff’s main instruction did not submit humanitarian negligence at all but only primary negligence in which some usual humanitarian submission terms were used; and that it was not a prejudicially erroneous submission because plaintiff did have and actually submitted a primary negligence case. See Pender v. Foeste, Mo.Sup., 329 S.W.2d 656, 661. The principles for determining defendant’s negligence just before reaching a point where defendant could not avoid striking the other car by stopping or swerving (if plaintiff wants it so limited) may be similar to those considered in determining negligence under the humanitarian rule (ability to stop short of collision or to swerve and failure to do so) and plaintiff’s main instruction may have been sufficient to submit these as elements of primary negligence in failing to prevent a collision of the two cars. My view is that such a ruling would be a sounder solution of this case than that made by the principal opinion.