Court Opinion

ID: 9531390
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 04:10:25.172815+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:28:26.169025
License: Public Domain

WILLIAMS, Vice Chief Justice
(dissenting) .
I respectfully dissent to the opinion of the majority for the reason that, to my notion, it substitutes this court in place of the jury in determining facts.
Plaintiff in error, hereinafter referred to as defendant, pleaded as a defense, that this was an unavoidable accident. To support this contention, he testified that he had never driven over this road except once, and that approximately one-half hour before, and then from the opposite direction; that he was driving at a reasonable speed for the condition of the road and visibility; and that he did not see the rise in the road until he was upon it. Testimony of a highway patrolman who drove over this road quite frequently was that “there was some degree of optical illusion” in approaching this hump from the north. Further, plaintiff’s (defendant in error’s) photographs of this highway in the vicinity of the accident show that the approaches to this hump are graded and filled; that the ascent and descent over the hump are not steep or abrupt.
Summing up defendant’s evidence as to an unavoidable accident, it tended to show:
1. That he was driving at a reasonable rate of speed under the circumstances ;
2. that the danger was not apparent until the accident occurred; 3. that he was not negligent; 4. that the accident occurred without fault! on his part; and 5. that when the accident did occur there was nothing he could do to avoid it.
The defense of unavoidable accident being pleaded, and the evidence being sufficient to present the issue, the trial court’s instruction on such issue was necessary. Tibbets & Pleasant, Inc., v. Benedict, 128 Okl. 106, 261 P. 551. In Pankey v. Public
*320Service Co., Okl., 288 P.2d 373, 375, we stated:
“Instruction No. 16 dealt with the subject of ‘unavoidable accident.’ Therein the trial court defined the term and told the. jury that neither party to such an accident is liable to the other for damages thereby sustained. Plaintiff’s claim that the giving of this instruction was error is based upon the premise, unsupported by citations from the record, that the evidence was insufficient to present such an issue. We ■do not agree. Upon thoroughly examining the record, we find evidence •on behalf of both the plaintiff and defendant, which, if considered together, •or as a whole, and believed by the jury, would have supported the conclusion that both the truck and the •coupe arrived in the intersection at the same time and that both drivers did what they could to avoid the accident, and that neither was negligent. In view of this, we cannot hold that the trial court should not have given an instruction pertinent to such evidence. It is not the trial court’s prerogative, prior to submission of such a cause to the jury, to pass upon issues about which the evidence is equivocal or conflicting, and to determine where the preponderance thereof lies. This is the exclusive prerogative of the jury, and a trial judge never errs in recognizing it as the one here did.”
There inheres in the jury’s verdict for the defendant a finding that he was not guilty of negligence.
The majority opinion thus determines that there is competent evidence upon which the jury could have reached a different verdict, therefore it reverses, in effect, the verdict of the jury. As I view it, the majority has determined as a fact that defendant was not shown to have had an unavoidable accident. Actually the question is not whether there was or was not an unavoidable accident, but whether there was sufficient evidence to require an instruction so the jury might determine whether there was an unavoidable accident. The function of a court of final appeal, in an action of legal cognizance, is to review the proceedings in the lower court for errors of law, and to determine whether the evidence is sufficient to warrant the action of the court and jury. If there is sufficient evidence, without regard to conflicts in the entire evidence, to support the jury’s verdict, such verdict should be sustained.
It is for the jury and not this court to determine the facts from all of the evidence introduced.
I therefore dissent.