Court Opinion

ID: 9445258
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 21:23:56.256805+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:30:11.202422
License: Public Domain

CAMERON, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
I am unable to join the majority in affirming the judgment in this case because I think the jury was probably led to its verdict by the submission to it of the question of whether House was protected by the principles of law governing action in an emergency. Under House’s own testimony there was nothing which the law recognizes as an emergency.
House was driving south towards his home at Shreveport, and rounded a sweeping curve as he entered Oil City on a road with which he was thoroughly familiar. While in that curve he met a car whose lights had not been dimmed. House does not claim that the lights were in any way abnormal, but he stated only that the lights “kind of bothered me.” He then looked at his speedometer and he was making forty miles an hour and he slowed down to some extent before he ran into the Hughes ear.1
He had completely passed the car with the bright lights before entering the straightaway along which the business houses and residences of Oil City were situated. That straightaway was six hundred feet long to the point of the accident. His lights were good and were dimmed by his own action and choice and his brakes were in first class condition. It was misting rain, and the road was wet.
House admitted that he knew he was entering a congested community and the evidence shows that, in the vicinity, were an oil field supply store, a cafe, two ice houses, one or more grocery stores and a motel. The Hughes car and the Murray car were interlocked and were almost entirely on the side of the highway House was traversing. They were situated opposite the entrance of a motel and quite close to the intersection of the *76highway with what appears from the photographs to be a main street of the town!
i All of these facts were known to House and the law charged him with the duty to drive his car in obedience to the dictates of prudence arising from those facts. One of the fixed facts of the situation was the presence of these two automobiles in his lane of the highway. They were there when he came around the curve. They did not dart or appear suddenly in front of him. They created no more of an emergency than would have been created if a group of children had been crossing the highway to the motel or traveling from the ice cream store the photographs show to be nearby. The witness Elder was actually standing in the road alongside the Hughes car. House would have run into any person or any object situated as was the Hughes car, and the majority opinion absolves him from liability under the emergency doctrine.
Such is, in my opinion, not the law. House was a very experienced driver. He knew how far his lights showed the way in the misting rain. He knew that pedestrians or cars would be likely to be using the road in front of him as they had a right to do. The law required him to anticipate the presence of persons and objects in the road and to accommodate liis speed and car control to the known weather, traffic and road conditions, to his ability to see as well as to his own state of excitement or “bother.”
The emergency doctrine depends upon the unusual, the sudden, the unexpected, —of such degree as to stun the average man, to blunt his reactions, to rob him momentarily of his ability to think and judge accurately. Does the “bother” of meeting a car with normal headlights qualify under that test and is the spell to be recognized as continuing for ten seconds and six hundred feet? Do misting rain and wet roads and objects in the road qualify? Not under the law of emergency as I understand it.
The Supreme Court of Louisiana has spoken on the subject in its most recent case and has refused to apply the emergency doctrine under facts much more favorable to the driver of the vehicle doing the damage than those here. Geoghegan v. Greyhound Corp., 1954, 226 La. 405, 76 So.2d 412,2 413. Greyhound’s bus had killed several head of cattle belonging to Geoghegan. It was being operated in a misting rain upon wet pavement at about forty-five miles per hour when it met a car and each driver dimmed his headlights. Immediately after passing that car and raising his headlights the bus driver was confronted with the several cattle which “evidently * * * came in from behind the oncoming car.” The trial Court had held Greyhound liable, but the Court of Appeals reversed on the ground that “the driver was confronted with a sudden emergency and did everything to avoid the accident.” The Supreme Court of Louisiana did not agree. It differentiated its former holding in Anderson v. Bendily, La.App., 66 So.2d 355, with this statement: “The holding * * * is not applicable * * * because all of those cases involve circumstances where animals suddenly darted in front of an automobile operated at a reasonable rate of speed. In the present case the animals walked or ‘stalked’ onto the highway and did not suddenly dart in front of a bus.”
The general rule governing such accidents in Louisiana was thus stated, 76 So.2d 413:
“ ‘A motorist is held to have seen an object, which, by the use of ordinary care and prudence, he should have seen in time to avoid running into it, and that the driver of an automobile is guilty of negligence in driving at a rate of speed greater than that in which he could stop within the range of his vision.’ * * * It is negligence to drive an automobile at a greater rate of speed than is prudent under the circumstances. * * *
*77“The operation of the bus at the rate of 45 miles per hour under the weather conditions was not the use of ordinary care and prudence and had the driver been operating the bus at a reasonable rate of speed he would have had time to avoid running into the cattle. The surface of the road was wet and his vision was restricted. Under such circumstances he should have operated the bus at a rate of speed that would give him control of his car in event that just such a condition, as he was confronted with, arose. Therefore, the result of the accident was due to his negligence.”
This last word of the highest court in Louisiana fits the situation before us perfectly, and establishes a rule which adjudges negligence under circumstances of emergency much plainer than those facing House. He had six hundred feet in which to raise his lights if needed or to discover an object much larger than cows, while Greyhound had no appreciable distance for action. He was approaching a congested community, while such an added burden did not apply in Greyhound’s case. The majority decision is, in my opinion, unjustified in the light of this rule so lately stated as the law in Louisiana, and I do not find any element of supposed emergency here which was not present there.
What we said in Geigy Chemical Corp. v. Allen, 5 Cir., 1955, 224 F.2d 110, applies here. We held that a motorist was guilty of negligence as a matter of law under circumstances more favorable to him than those here:
“The large and easily visible truck was certainly occupying Appellee’s half of the road as he approached the point of collision * * *.
“If Appellee was blinded so that he could not see up the road towards the ti'uck, it was his duty to bring his car immediately to a stop until the blinding glare should be removed, or at least to bring it under such control that he and those who might be beyond the blaring light would be protected. * * *
“The preservation of life and property demands that every motorist stop his car when he cannot see where its motion is leading him. If the mass which loomed up before the unseeing eyes of Appellee had been a group of school children, the result would not have been different. The fact is, if a motorist is not to be counted negligent when he meets a car having normal lights and operated in the usual manner, and moves nonchalantly into an area where the road ahead is completely hidden from his view, and does nothing at all to protect those who may be in the hidden area, our roads will become places of potential carnage every time two motor cars meet in the nighttime. * * * It is clear to us that this collision was caused by failure of Appellee to look where the law required him to look, or to see what the law required him to see, or to keep his car under such control that he could stop it within the range of his vision.” 224 F.2d at pages 113-114.
The fact that Louisiana gives some elasticity to the rule as stated in these two cases does not mean that the rule is destroyed or that it does not apply in all of its force where the facts undis-putedly show that there are no unusual circumstances such as the law recognizes as creating an emergency. The negligence of House was much more palpable than that of the drivers in the Geoghegan and the Geigy cases, and he was, in my opinion, guilty of negligence as a matter of law and his insurer ought not to be rescued from the obligation to pay these very badly injured people by the emergency doctrine. For the reasons stated I think the judgment should be reversed and the case remanded for another trial.
Rehearing denied: CAMERON, Circuit Judge, dissenting.

. He admitted that his speed was about twenty miles an hour at the time of the impact. He drove the two interlocked cars three to four feet and did damage to his own front end costing $711.00 to repair.

. Reversing same case, La.App. 1st Cir., 1954, 71 So.2d 642, 644.