Court Opinion

ID: 9710769
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 04:17:22.738281+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:22:59.869689
License: Public Domain

Opinion by
Mr. Justice Jones,
This is an appeal from a refusal of the court below to take off a compulsory nonsuit entered at trial as to both defendants, a husband and wife. The plaintiff sued to recover damages for injury to himself and to his automobile as a result of a collision with an automobile owned by the husband-defendant but driven by the wife who was accompanied by their two minor children. The husband was not present.
The plaintiff’s theory in joining the husband as a party defendant was that the wife was his agent or servant and was driving the automobile on his business at the time of the accident. The defendants, by their answer, denied the allegations of the wife’s agency and the husband’s control; and, the plaintiff offered no proof of either allegation. The only evidence concerning the husband was that he was the sole owner of the automobile involved in the collision with the plaintiff’s *497car. The nonsuit as to the husband was therefore properly entered. In cases not involving business automobiles we have consistently held in a long line of decisions, as was recognized in Klein v. Klein, 311 Pa. 217, 219,166 A. 790, that “ ‘In an action to recover damages for injuries resulting from an automobile accident, it is necessary for plaintiff to prove not only that defendant was the owner of the car and that, the driver was his servant, but that such servant was at the time engaged in the master’s business.’ ” The Klein case pertinently added that “This rule applies with peculiar force when the parties are husband and wife.”
The evidence offered by the plaintiff in an effort to hold the wife-defendant liable disclosed the following set of circumstances. About 2:45 p.m. on a day late in November, the plaintiff was driving his automobile westwardly on the Pennsylvania Turnpike in the vicinity of Somerset. As stated in the appellant’s history of the case, and not contradicted, the Turnpike consists of two concrete highway lanes, one for eastbound and the other for westbound traffic, each lane being twenty-four feet wide and separated by a ten foot medial strip. The day was cold and gusty with snow flurries. There were some ice patches on the highway. The plaintiff said the visibility “appeared to be fair”; his witnesses described the weather as murky. A mile or two before reaching the Somerset interchange, the plaintiff had slowed down from his normal speed of thirty-five miles an hour because of the appearance of “patches of ice”. Shortly after that, the skidding of a car up ahead of him, which had just passed him, caused the plaintiff to slow down to almost a stop about a mile west of the Somerset interchange and to pull over to the right and on to. the berm with his righthand wheels. While the plaintiff was in that position, a car driven by the defendant, Mrs. Patterson, proceeding in the opposite direction in the east*498bound lane, crossed the medial strip and crashed into the front of the plaintiff’s car, causing the damages to him and his automobile for which he sued. At the place of the accident the Turnpike was level and straight for a considerable distance in both directions. In addition to proving the presence of Mrs. Patterson’s car in the wrong highway lane at the point of collision, the plaintiff also proved that it was there as the result of having skidded. Two of his witnesses who had followed Mrs. Patterson’s car for a distance of ten miles testified that they were driving very slowly, fifteen to twenty miles an hour. The plaintiff offered no evidence from which the jury could find that the skidding of Mrs. Patterson’s car was the result of negligence on her part. In the evidentiary situation thus presented at the conclusion of the plaintiff’s case, the defendant moved for, and the trial judge entered, the compulsory nonsuit which the court later refused to remove.
Had the plaintiff been content with proving that the collision occurred in the westbound lane where Mrs. Patterson’s car, proceeding eastwardly, should not have been, the burden would have been upon the defendant to offer exculpatory proof if she wished to be found not guilty of causative negligence. The presence of an automobile on the wrong side of a highway is prima facie evidence of the driver’s negligence: Miles v. Myers, 353 Pa. 316, 318, 45 A. 2d 50. But, here, the explanation of how the Patterson car came to be in the wrong traffic lane was supplied by the plaintiff himself when he offered evidence that it was the result of skidding. It then became the duty of the plaintiff to offer testimony from which the jury could infer that the skid resulted from negligence on the part of the driver. In Johnson v. American Reduction Co., 305 Pa. 537, 541, 158 A. 153, Mr. Justice Drew, speaking for this court in affirming a judgment n.o.v. for lack of negligence, said “The skidding; of. a vehicle does *499not of itself establish, or constitute negligence. It is encumbent upon the plaintiff to prove the skidding resulted from the negligent act of the defendant; otherwise he is absolved from the consequences: [citing cases].” That rule has been frequently recognized and reiterated.
All that the evidence in this case showed as to the circumstances attending the collision was that the road was level and straight for a considerable distance in either direction; that there were patches of ice on the roadway and some snow; that occasional gusts of wind whipped up the snow; that the visibility was fair; that Mrs. Patterson had been proceeding at a speed of twenty miles an hour for a distance of ten miles; and that her car skidded into the plaintiff’s. The learned judge of the court below correctly appraised the evidentiary situation as follows: “[A] minute examination of all the testimony, in a light most favorable to the plaintiff, compels the conclusion that plaintiff has proved nothing more than an automobile collision as the result of skidding of defendant’s automobile; there is not a scintilla of evidence of negligence in the operation of her vehicle on the part of defendant Gladys Patterson; no circumstances were shown upon which we could say to the jury that they could logically find or reasonably infer negligence on the part of this defendant; had we submitted the case to the jury we would in essence have been permitting the jury to guess or speculate as to any negligence on the part of this defendant and that we are neither willing nor permitted to do.”
There was nothing in the managing of the defendant’s car, prior to the skidding and the consequent collision, to indicate a lack of ordinary care in its operation: see Simpson v. Jones, 284 Pa. 596, 598, 131 A. 541. There was no evidence of excessive speed or that the. skidding was the result of carelessness on the part *500of the driver even though there were “patches of ice” along the highway: see Wertz v. Shade, 121 Pa. Superior Ct. 4, 8, 182 A. 789. It is true that, where there are unusual conditions, the question as to whether or not the speed of the defendant, regardless of the precise rate, was excessive in the circumstances may become a question for the jury: see Eisenhower v. Hall’s Motor Transit Company, 351 Pa. 200, 205, 40 A. 2d 458. But, the presence of ice patches on a straight and level section of an improved highway does not constitute a condition so unusual as to require that a jury be permitted to guess that an ordinary passenger car travelling at fifteen to twenty miles an hour was being operated at a negligent speed. In Hatch v. Robinson, 99 Pa. Superior Ct. 141, 145, Judge Baldrige spoke for the Superior Court as follows, “It cannot be said, however, that operating an automobile in the open country at the rate of twenty-five to thirty miles an hour is greater than is reasonable and proper where there is no congested traffic, although there may he an occasional presence of ice or mud” (Emphasis supplied). See also Wertz v. Shade, supra.
As skidding, in and of itself, is not evidence of negligence, obviously something additional must be shown before it can justifiably be found to have resulted from the operator’s carelessness. Compliance with that requirement in the cases cited and relied upon by the plaintiff readily distinguishes them from the present. In Davin v. Levin, 357 Pa. 554, 556, 55 A. 2d 364, the defendant was driving his truck on trolley tracks on a wet and slippery day at a speed of twenty-five miles per hour. The negligence which caused the skidding in that case derived from the fact, as recognized in the opinion for the learned court below whereon we affirmed, that “. . . it requires no argument to convince anybody who drives a car that one who drives on wet rails can anticipate trouble whether he elects to stay *501on them or attempts to get off them.” In Schulz v. Reading Transportation Company, 354 Pa. 373, 374-375, 47 A. 2d 213, the operator of the bus, which skidded, himself described the road as being “very slippery, icy and sleety; it was partly raining and snowing and slushy.” Descending a “heavy grade”, the bus “hit” a sharp curve, with which the driver was well acquainted, and “the bus went into a skid.” In Eisenhower v. Hall’s Motor Transit Company, supra, the defendant’s operator was driving a tractor-trailer which had been loaded in such a manner as to lessen the effectiveness of the brakes and restrict the steering. Driving down a curving hill in high gear at a speed of twenty to thirty miles an hour, the operator, becoming aware of the impairment in the steering, jammed on his brakes and the skid followed. The question of the operator’s negligence was properly for the jury in both of the cases last cited. The necessity of additional proof in order to constitute skidding negligence is well illustrated by a comparison of two actions growing out of the same accident: see Master v. Goldstein’s Fruit & Produce, Inc., 344 Pa. 1, 23 A. 2d 443; and Kotlikoff v. Master, 345 Pa. 258, 27 A. 2d 35. There was no such additional evidence in the instant case.
Judgment affirmed.