Court Opinion

ID: 9711201
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 04:26:17.240604+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:02.777989
License: Public Domain

Becker, J.
I dissent to Divisions I through VI and the result. If we follow the rule that the evidence is to be considered in the light most favorable to plaintiff the following facts appear.
1. The accident occurred on a major, heavily traveled, arterial, United States Highway at about 10:30 p.m. on a dark, clear night.
2. At the intersection in question this highway was protected by a reflectorized stop sign visible for 1500 feet to the west.
3. Decedent’s ear ran this stop sign and collided with a car properly using the arterial highway.
4. The car approached the intersection at 50 to 60 miles per hour.
5. Decedent driver was very familiar with this particular intersection, lived in the near vicinity, and had traversed it at least twice that day and at least once a week, over the past two years.
6. Plaintiff warned decedent of the presence of the stop sign when about 400 or 500 feet from it. Decedent did not slow down.
7. At about 250 to 300 feet from the intersection plaintiff said to decedent, “Stop! Stop!” Decedent did not decrease speed.
8. At 200 feet the car maintained the same speed. At 150 feet plaintiff saw the lights of a car approaching the intersection on highway 169 from the north and immediately heard the squeal of brakes. He remembers no more.
9. The intersection visibility was obstructed along decedent’s route to it by a cornfield, corncrib and other obstructions. He was in fact entering a practically blind intersection as to traffic from the north.
10. Decedent’s car laid down 75 feet of skid marks. Eleven feet of skid marks traversed highway 169. The stop sign was 30 feet back from the highway. Thus the skid marks only started some 34 feet before the stop sign.
*66111. The highway patrolman testified as to stopping distances and reaction time. He put reaction time at 55 feet at 50 m.p.h. and 66 feet at 60 m.p.h.; total stopping distance including reaction time was put at 201 feet at 50 m.p.h. and 281 feet at 60 m.p.h. This testimony was admitted without objection.
From these facts the jury could conclude that decedent intended to deliberately run this stop sign and did not change his mind until the lights of the other car became apparent when he was about 150 feet from the intersection. Then it was too late.
I. We are not concerned here as to whether the jury could properly conclude that this stop sign was run through inadvertence and mistake. This is not the point here. It is for the jury, not for the court, to determine this issue. Mescher v. Brogan, 223 Iowa 573, 272 N.W. 645. We do not weigh the evidence. Clark v. Marietta, 258 Iowa 106, 138 N.W.2d 107.
Most recently we have consolidated our definition of recklessness and our recitation of its essential elements into the following language:
“Beckless operation of a motor vehicle as used in our ‘guest statute’, section 321.494, Code 1962, means more than negligence, more than want of ordinary care. It means, proceeding with no care coupled with disregard for consequences, the acts must manifest a heedless disregard for or indifference to the rights of others in the face of apparent danger or so obvious the operator should be cognizant of it, when the consequences of such actions are such an injury is a probability rather than a possibility. Becklessness may include willfulness or wantonness, but if the conduct is more than negligence it may be reckless without being willful and wanton. The elements of recklessness are: (1) No care coupled with disregard for consequences, (2) there must be evidence of defendant’s knowledge, actual or chargeable, of danger and proceeding without any heed of or concern for consequences, and (3) the consequences of the actions of the driver are such that the occurrence of injury is a probability rather than a possibility. We have required evidence of a persistent course of conduct to show no care with disregard for consequences. If it were not so required we would be allowing an inference of recklessness from every negligent act. *662Kauzlarich v. Fitzwater, 255 Iowa 1067,1069, 1070, 125 N.W.2d 205, 206; Delay v. Kudart, 256 Iowa 523, 530, 128 N.W.2d 201, 205; Martin v. Cafer, 258 Iowa 176, 179, 138 N.W.2d 71, 73, 74; Clark v. Marietta, 258 Iowa 106, 113, 138 N.W.2d 107, 111, and citations in each.” Shoop v. Hubbard, 259 Iowa 1362, 1364, 1365, 147 N.W.2d 51, 53.
If the jury could conclude that there was a deliberate attempt to run this practically blind, heavily trafficked, major intersection, reasonable minds could concur that such an act shows a disregard for consequences, a no care attitude, a heedless disregard and indifference to the rights of others in the face of apparent danger. Thus the foregoing test would be met as a jury question unless the claimed lack of persistence is fatal. This latter element will be examined later.
Prior stop sign-guest statute cases in Iowa are not comparable. In Neessen v. Armstrong, 213 Iowa 378, 239 N.W. 56, the accident occurred in the city, the only evidence of the operation of the car as it approached the stop sign was that it slowed down, but did not stop, and then proceeded into the intersection: The factual situation is different. (I would add that.a rolling stop or a hesitation stop might well be considered only negligence under traffic conditions prevalent in the town of Grundy Center in 1931, but something very different on a blind, arterial highway intersection under 1964 traffic conditions.)
Welch v. Minkel (1933), 215 Iowa 848, 246 N.W. 775, was another rolling stop-city intersection situation. Again this court held as a matter of law that there was no recklessness. It would appear that slowing from 20. or 25 m.p.h. to 15 or 20 m.p.h. and going through a stop sign is far different from approaching a blind intersection at 50 or 60 m.p.h. Again, I would observe that such conduct in 1933 seems (to me at least) to be different in kind from similar conduct under traffic conditions prevailing in 1964.
The weight of authority seems to be that deliberately running a stop sign may be sufficient to make a jury question on the issue of willful or wanton misconduct under a guest statute. 8 Am. Jur.2d, Automobiles and Highway Traffic, section 514, *663page 75 states: “The gross negligence, wilful or wanton misconduct, or recklessness, which is the condition of liability of the owner or operator of a motor vehicle for injuries sustained by a gratuitous guest under a guest statute or comparable common-law rule, may be predicated upon the failure of the operator to observe, or his disregard of, a traffic sign, signal, or marking. For example, the failure of a motorist-host to stop at a stop sign may be sufficient, either alone or in conjunction with other acts or omissions, to take to the jury the question of his liability to his guest under a guest statute or comparable common-law rule requiring a showing of gross negligence, or wilful or wanton misconduct.”
As noted by the majority, at 3 A. L. R.3d, page 180, we find a very extensive annotation on duties in relation to stop signs. At page 430 et seq. of that annotation we find a large collection of cases relating to violation of stop signs as a basis for gross negligence or recklessness under the various guest statutes. It would appear that by far the greater number of cases supports the following statement:
“The violation of an ordinance or a state law requiring a person to stop before crossing a main thoroughfare is ordinarily negligence per se; but when there is evidence * * * that a defendant in operating his automobile approaches a dangerous highway crossing, along which his view is obstructed, and, with conscious and timely knowledge of the existence of a stop signal, marking the intersecting highway as a main thoroughfare, drives on at a high and dangerous speed and in disregard of the injunction to stop, a question of fact as to wanton misconduct is presented for the determination of the jury under instructions of the court.” Jenkins v. Sharp (1942), 140 Ohio St. 80, 84, 23 Ohio Ops. 295, 297, 42 N.E.2d 755, 757.
II. The majority opinion recites the three essential elements of recklessness, oft repeated in our prior cases. It then adds the phrase, “We have required evidence of a persistent course of conduct to show no care with disregard of consequences. If it were not so required, we would be allowing an inference of recklessness in every negligent act.” This new element should not become an absolute necessity in all cases. It has validity *664where there is insufficient or no evidence of willful disregard of consequences. In such cases the persistent acts which ordinarily are simple negligence may in that persistent course of conduct be found to evidence a reckless disregard of consequences.
But where, as here, the evidence may reasonably be interpreted to show deliberate and willful intent to violate the type of moving traffic violation that inevitably brings with it the probability of injury to self and others, then it would seem that recklessness would be a permissible conclusion with or without prior similar acts.
In a similar case cited by the majority the dissent on this point is worth repetition in part at least.
“Another point of confusion illustrated here is as to whether the case against the driver must necessarily include ‘something in the nature of a continued or persistent course of action’ (presumably negligent action). Evidently the opinion of the court rests on the supposed absence of this factor from the evidence as well as on the presence of friendship between driver and guest, though the relative importance of the two considerations is not disclosed. Now it is difficult for me to conceive of anything more ‘persistent’ than the act of a driver who approaches a thoroughfare guarded by stop signs, knowing it in advance to be so guarded, and then (as there was ample reason to believe) deliberately crosses without stopping at such speed that the resulting collision with a car on the thoroughfare violently throws his three guests out of his closed car, as well as throwing one passenger out of the other closed car. If that is not ‘persistent’, then it is also not persistent deliberately to aim a pistol at another and pull the trigger. But be that as it may, we have never clearly held and should not hold it to be a necessary condition of gross negligence, that at some time or other prior to the accident the defendant must have been doing the same kind of negligent acts that caused the collision — or perhaps similar kinds of negligent acts. Does the court here mean to infer that, if Mr. Blake had ‘run’ two or three earlier stop signs, or perhaps only one, then the verdict would be allowed to stand ? Possibly it does. But if so, is there any logical *665difference as regards mental attitude between a man who deliberately runs one stop sign and one who, deliberately or non-deliberately, runs also the preceding several signs ? In other words, is not the idea of continuity or persistency but another phase of the idea of intent to do the negligent act or make the negligent omission? When a driver knowingly dashes at high speed past a stop sign into a plainly crowded thoroughfare, surely we will not say there is no basis of gross negligence just because he started his journey only a block or two away and therefore had no earlier opportunity to commit the same act. The Restatement, Torts, gives this very example as one of a clear case of recklessness or gross negligence as distinguished from the inadvertence or mere carelessness, which is ordinary negligence. See see. 500, Comment b.” Rogers v. Blake, 150 Tex. 373, 381, 240 S.W.2d 1001, 1006.
This case deals with gross negligence rather than recklessness but the definitions are essentially the same. The ease is cited as authority by the majority.
The requirement of persistence seems to be relatively recent in our cases. The phraseology seems to have been based on Wilcox v. Hilligas (1962), 254 Iowa 204, 210, 117 N.W.2d 42, where this court decided as a matter of law that kissing while driving could not be deemed reckless driving.
“Reckless conduct, like negligent conduct, starts at some point of time. What we are concerned with is evidence from which the inference of reckless conduct may properly be drawn. With few exceptions we have required evidence of a persistent course of conduct to show no care coupled with disregard of consequences, the primary element of recklessness. This is true because if it were not so required we would be allowing, an inference of recklessness from every negligent act. We cannot say the result was so obvious the conduct of defendant amounted to no care or that injury was the probable result. It is common knowledge that young drivers kiss their girl friends while driving, and have since the advent of the automobile. This is perhaps negligent conduct so far as the operation of the vehicle is concerned, but from the record presented we hold there is not a *666permissible inference of reckless operation. As supporting this view, see Neyens v. Gehl, 235 Iowa 115, 15 N.W.2d 888.”
From this rather innocuous start we have usually added a need for persistent conduct without relying on that phrase. No critical examination of just when persistent conduct should be required has come out of our cases. Certainly a persistent series of negligent acts may be taken as indicative of reckless indifference. But this should not be necessarily so. If the act can be found to be deliberate, the consequences probable and risk unreasonable within the framework of our prior definitions the result should not turn on how long or how many times the actor repeated the same act. Again, this is better left to the jury.
Put differently, a persistent course of conduct may be persuasive in showing recklessness under given fact situations. It should not be a sine qua non to recovery if the single act rises to the definitive requirements of recklessness. Hence deliberate failure to heed a stop sign, or a stop-and-go red light, or an activated railroad sign, or a yellow no passing line, or any of many other such serious violations with a high degree of probable disastrous results, could result in a finding of recklessness without repetition. Indeed the chance for repetition may never come.
It seems that the definition of recklessness and our application of that definition has carried the restrictions of the guest statute far beyond what could reasonably have been intended by the'legislature: Between what is clearly simple negligence and what is clearly reckless conduct there is a substantial gray area. The cases in the gray area should be submitted to the jury with proper instructions. This case is well within that area.
I would reverse with instructions to grant a new trial on the issue of recklessness.
Justices Stuart, Mason and Rawlings join in this dissent.