Court Opinion

ID: 9770864
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 16:23:31.670412+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:31:21.406689
License: Public Domain

*813ELLISON, J.
(dissenting).
After a jury verdict for both the defendant-respondent City and the defendant-appellant Public Service Company, the trial court sustained the plaintiff-respondent’s motion for new trial on the ground that it had erred against her in giving the following instruction No. 5 in behalf of the appellant Public Service Company [parenthesis and inserted letters x, y, ours] :
“The Court instructs the jury that if you find and believe from the evidence that on the occasion in question the operator of defendant, St. Louis Public Service Company’s motor bus did not, and by the exercise of the highest degree of care, could not have seen the defect on the sidewalk, xor having seen said defect, would not, in the exercise of the highest degree of care, have considered said defect to be dangerous, and further find that in stopping said bus at said point to discharge plaintiff and other passengers defendant, St. Louis Public Service Company, was exercising the highest degree of care and that he (the bus driver) was not negligent/ then you are instructed that plaintiff cannot recover against defendant, St. Louis Public Service Company,- and your verdict must be for that defendant.”
As will be noted the part of this instruction between the inserted x and y tells the jury that if the bus driver, after seeing the defect in the sidewalk, “would not, in the exercise of the highest degree of care, have considered said defect to be dangerous, and * * =x=_>> Then the instruction continues in the conjunctive, with the further required finding that in stopping the bus at that place the driver was exercising the highest degree of care, and was not negligent.
The principal opinion holds this part of the instruction was erroneous because it alternatively predicated that the bus driver after seeing the defect in the sidewalk “would not, * * * have considered said defect to be dangerous. ’ ’ The reason ■ stated for that conclusion is that this part of the instruction, as thus quoted, left it to the personal judgment of the bus driver as to whether the defect was dangerous, whereas, under the law that question must be determined from what a reasonably prudent person would conclude in the same or similar circumstances.
But in so stating the opinion omitted from its quotation of the instruction at the place marked with asterisks the phrase “in the exercise of the highest degree. of care. ’ ’ In other words the instruction, as actually written and submitted, contained that phrase and required the jury to find that the bus driver after having seen the defect in the sidewalk “would not in the exercise of the highest degree of care, have considered said defect to be dangerous.” (Italics ours) These italicised words did not say, or mean, the highest degree of care in the personal opinion of the bus driver, but did mean the highest *814degree of care as measured by tbe standards of a very prudent bus driver in the same or similar circumstances.
The principal opinion further states that in LaVigne v. St. L. Pub. Serv. Co. (Mo. Div. 1) 181 SW. (2d) 541, this court held a similar instruction bad. I can see no similarity whatever between that case and this. There the suit was brought under the res ipsa doctrine, and the defendant asked an instruction No. 3 which implied that if the streetcar motorman was not negligent the plaintiff could not recover, whereas there was evidence that the [109] streetcar violently lurched and jolted, possibly from causes other than the motorman’s negligence. The court held the instruction was erroneous.
In my opinion Instruction No. 5 in this case was not erroneous, and the trial court’s order granting the new. trial should be set aside and the cause remanded with directions to enter judgment for the appellant Service Company.