Court Opinion

ID: 9536421
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 06:59:39.616895+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:54:28.688767
License: Public Domain

WILLIAMS, Justice
(specially concurring in result in part and dissenting in part) :
I concur specially in the result achieved in the majority opinion to the extent only of the reversal of the judgment of the trial court.
I respectfully dissent to the entering of an order for the dismissal of plaintiff’s action as against defendants Transport Indemnity Company and Trans-Con Freight Lines.
I feel the subject judgment should be reversed because of errors in the reception of the testimony of an expert witness, in the instructing of the jury and in the denial of motion for a new trial in connection with those matters and because of the giving of apparently false testimony by an important eye-witness to the collision on which the suit is based.
I do not agree that the Court may say that certain evidence finally serves to completely nullify and dispatch all of plaintiffs’ various grounds of complaint. That a person may have complied with his statutorily prescribed duties in a given respect may hardly be grounds for saying the jury under proper evidence still could not find him guilty of negligence under principles of common law of broader scope than the narrow requirements of a statute.
Specifically, had there been no error in the proceedings, I believe that the jury may properly have been warranted in finding from the evidence in this record that Trans-Con’s driver was negligent in driving its truck, eight-feet wide and 11½ feet tall, up to a narrow bridge and suddenly slowing or stopping at a time when he knew he was being closely followed by heavily-laden trucks, and that plaintiff’s decedent was coming to meet him with his left wheels a foot over the center line of the roadway and at a point where posts driven into the ground prevented those behind him from moving to their right.
The grounds of error upon which I believe the trial court may well have been reversed were covered in the third, fourth and fifth propositions of plaintiff in error. No worthwhile purpose apparently would be served by further reference to those.
I therefore concur specially in the reversal but dissent to the ordering of dismissal in the trial court as to the named two defendants.