Court Opinion

ID: 9641747
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 17:39:39.430955+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:39.543416
License: Public Domain

On Motion for Rehearing
STONE, Judge.
In his motion for rehearing, plaintiff recognizes that “there is no testimony from any witness as to any definite speed of the defendant’s vehicle except that given by the defendant himself who admittedly was called as plaintiff’s witness”; but, for the first time, plaintiff’s counsel now suggests that the jury reasonably might have inferred from some of “the physical facts” that defendant’s pickup was traveling faster than twenty miles per hour. In our opinion, we simply followed and adopted the theory of plaintiff’s counsel who, in outlining on page 9 of his brief, the testimony “most favorable to plaintiff’ which, “if accepted by the jury as shown by their verdict, made a submissible case,” included the unambiguous, unequivocal and unqualified factual statement that “the defendant proceeded into this intersection at a speed of 20 m.p. h."
As we read the record, it would not have permitted the inference for which plaintiff’s counsel now contends; but, if defendant’s pickup had been approaching the intersection at a faster rate of speed, that would have afforded no legal justification or excuse for the failure of plaintiff’s brother to exercise the care required of him. See Branscum v. Glaser, Mo., 234 S.W.2d 626, 627, where the court commented that apparently plaintiff’s husband had not seen-defendant’s approaching truck “or he would’ not have gone on to the highway in front of it, traveling as plaintiff alleged it was,. at excessive and dangerous speed.” (Emphasis ours.)
Plaintiff’s motion for rehearing is overruled.
McDOWELL, P. J., and RUARK, J.,. concur.