Court Opinion

ID: 9754255
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 19:52:16.1999+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:27:51.117332
License: Public Domain

Opinion by
Mr. Chief Justice Drew,
The accident giving rise to this suit in trespass occurred during the reconstruction of Route 422 in Butler County when Paul Lee Sankey, an employe of the construction company was struck and killed by a truck owned and operated by James Russell Young. John C. Sankey, administrator of Paul Sankey’s estate, brought this action against Young under the Wrongful Death Act and the Survival Act. At the trial the jury returned a verdict that both defendant and Sankey were guilty of negligence. A motion for new trial was dismissed and judgment was .entered for defendant.
The new road known, as State Highway Route 422 was to be a three-lane concrete highway. On July 6, 1949, the date of the accident, one outside lane had been compléted and the center lane was being laid. To facilitate this process a “batch plant” was set up some distance from the place of operation and there the dry concrete was made according to formula. Some ten to twenty trucks, among them defendant’s, were employed to haul the dry concrete from the batch plant to the mixer where it was mixed and poured onto the road bed. To assure constant production the dry concrete had to be delivered to the mixer at a rate of one truck load every minute and a half. The mixer was set up in the third lane which had been rough graded but not finished. The trucks would drive up that lane, turn around and back-up to the mixer. Because-of the necessity for rapid delivery several trucks were usually in line awaiting their turn to deliver to the mixer.
*341On the morning of the accident a spreader had broken down and was pushed to a point in the center lane about seventy-five feet in front of the construction work. ' A projection on the spreader extended twenty-six inches into the lane used by the trucks and on that projection was placed a can of water. At about 10:30 A.M., Sankey and several other workmen had gone to the water can for a drink. At that time, defendant’s truck was stopped with its motor running fifteen to twenty feet beyond the water can and in a position to back past it in going toward the mixer. Sankey stood to the rear of defendant’s truck and looking away from it. Someone called out that a truck was overturning near the mixer. Sankey took two steps toward the mixer when he was struck by defendant’s truck which had at the same time begun backing up. The injuries caused by the accident resulted in Sankey’s death a few minutes later.
On these facts defendant’s negligence is not and could not be questioned. The jury properly found that in backing his truck without giving warning or ascertaining that no one was behind him, he failed to exercise reasonable care: Potter Title and Trust Co. v. Young, 367 Pa. 239, 80 A. 2d 76; Caulton v. Eyre & Co., Inc., 330 Pa. 385, 119 A. 136. It is plaintiff’s contention, however, that defendant was guilty of wanton misconduct and the trial judge erred in failing to instruct the jury on that subject. To accept such an argument would be to ignore the basic and fundamental distinction between negligence and wantonness.
“Negligence consists of inattention or inadvertence, whereas wantonness exists where the danger to the plaintiff, though realized, is so recklessly disregarded that, even though there be no actual intent, there is at least a willingness to inflict injury, a conscious indifference to the perpetration of the wrong.”: Kasano*342vich v. George, 348 Pa. 199, 203, 34 A. 2d 523. In the present case defendant could not see directly to. the rear of the truck because of the construction of the body. He should under those circumstances have given some warning so that any person who might have been behind the truck could have gotten out of its path. His failure to do so was negligence, but negligence, however gross, :is not wantonness: Turek v. Pennsylvania R. R. Co., 369 Pa. 341. There is no evidence that defendant kneAV Sankey was in a position of danger. KnoAvledge that a person is in fact in a position of peril or circumstances from which such knowledge can be inferred must be shown before wanton misconduct can be found to exist: Engle v. Reider, 366 Pa. 411, 77 A. 2d 621; Kasanovich v. George, supra. See also Tanner v. Pa. Truck Lines, Inc., 363 136, 69 A. 2d 366. There being no evidence of wanton misconduct, the trial court properly refused to submit that issue to the jury.
Plaintiff also argues that since Sankey was a Avorkman he could not be held to the same degree of care as a pedestrian. That rule is, however, only applicable where the injured person is actively engaged in his work at the time of the accident. As Ave said in Copertino v. Chrobak, 346 Pa. 49, 51, 29 A. 2d 504: “But this rule does not apply AAdiere, at the time of the accident, the workman is at a place Avhere his work does not require him to be, is not actually engaged upon his labors, and the circumstances are such that he is free to take precautions for his own safety.”
Here, Sankey had stopped his work to get a drink and Avas certainly free to take any precautions he believed necessary. He was fully aware of the procedure followed in backing the trucks to the mixer. In fact, one of plaintiff’s witnesses testified that he was at the water can at the same time but stood inside the form *343for tlie center lane as a precautionary measure. Under those circumstances the jury was fully justified in finding Sankey guilty of contributory negligence. This is true even though a truck overturned near the mixer. The trial judge instructed the jury that they were to find the facts by careful consideration of all of the evidence and from those facts determine whether Sankey exercised reasonable care under the circumstances. With those instructions in mind it is obvious that the jury believed that the overturning truck was not an occurrence of such a nature that a reasonably prudent man would have been diverted to such an extent that he would have disregarded his own safety.
Under all the evidence we are convinced that the jury reached a proper verdict on a record that is free from harmful error. Accordingly judgment was correctly entered on that verdict.
Judgment affirmed.