Court Opinion

ID: 9447290
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 22:30:52.259273+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:30:58.473177
License: Public Domain

TUTTLE, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
With the, greatest deference to the views of the majority, I must dissent.
The recovery allowed by the trial court was, in my opinion based on nothing more than the possibility (on an extremely remote possibility) that the government truck ran across the road to its left and into the oncoming truck because its right-hand front wheel came off due to the government’s negligence.
There were several eye witnesses to everything that happened. Several of them testified at the trial. Unfortunately several of them, including the driver of the government truck, died in the crash. All of the eye witnesses testified that the Army truck angled to the left of the center line and that they did not see any wheel come off of the truck or any untoward event before the crash that brought a pile-up and fire involving two other vehicles.
In this state of facts there was no burden on the government to prove any theory as to what caused the accident! Unexplained, this state of facts would require a judgment that the injury was caused by the negligence of the driver. The opinion, it seems to me, is too much preoccupied with knocking down the government’s theory of the case. It needs no theory. In McNamara v. American Motors Corp., 5 Cir., 247 F.2d 445, 447, we said:
“ * * * we think the plaintiff’s claim is untenable in law and in fact. It is untenable in law because it unwarrantedly assumes, contrary to settled law, that-theory and speculation, as to how decedent’s death occurred, can serve as evidence, satisfying plaintiff’s burden to make out her case, and shifting to defendant the burden of showing by evidence that plaintiff’s theory was wrong, or of coming forward with a theory of its own, as to decedent’s death, and evidence showing it to be a better, that is a more plausible, theory than the one plaintiff advances.”
In all reason, it is the plaintiffs’ theory that must be examined, because it is only by establishing by competent proof that this theory of the occurrence is what happened that the plaintiffs could recover.
Examining the plaintiffs’ theory, we find it to be that, due to some negligence at the government repair installation, some of the studs which held the right-hand front wheel were improperly attached to the velocity housing; that this improper attachment caused or permitted six of the ten studs to pull loose by stripping their threads; that this caused or permitted the wheel to come off; it then dropped back and wedged under the right fender; this raised the right side and threw the truck to the left and into the other vehicle. This theory is expounded in spite of the fact that no one saw any of these things happen, but because an automobile repair expert gave the opinion that the wheel became dismounted in such a manner. The only observable physical facts upon which this opinion was based were that after this crash, which occurred between three automobiles whose combined speed at time of impact was *805between 60 and 90 miles per hour, the right-hand front wheel was in fact off, and the threads of six of the studs had been stripped and two remaining studs that had not been stripped were still firmly screwed into a part of the velocity housing which had itself been torn apart, with a part of it still attached to the two studs and wheel.
I think it is self evident that the chain of causation which the plaintiffs’ expert built up, embodying, as it does, inferences from the one circumstance of the loss of the wheel as a result of or before the crash, that the improper insertion of the studs rather than the tremendous impact of the crash tore this wheel from the truck with such force as to break the casting of the velocity housing and strip the heavy threads of six studs; that this wheel, when lost, rolled back and under a lower running board before the axle assembly could drop to the ground; that such action caused the front end to turn to the left instead of to the right; that such loss of the wheel was the result of some negligent act of the government at its repair shop, although it was not shown that the studs were removed or needed to be removed in the overhaul job, would be too tenuous to be the basis of a fact finding even though the known physical facts made it appear equally reasonable with any other theory. See Smith v. General Motors, 5 Cir., 227 F.2d 210; McNamara v. American Motors Corporation, supra.
Where, as here, such chain of causation is not only too tenuous to be considered, but when the only theory on which the plaintiff could support a claim of negligence is itself, as I firmly believe, inherently incredible, I am convinced that the judgment of the trial court based on such theory is clearly erroneous.
It simply seems to me so contrary to common knowledge of physical facts that the accident could have occurred as contended for by the appellees that I think a more detailed statement of the facts should be made than is contained in the opinion of the court.
Stone, the driver of the grain truck which was first struck by the government vehicle, testified that when he was about 50 to 100 feet from the Army truck he saw it angling towards him, across the center line of the road; he himself was doing 20 to 30 miles per hour; the Army truck was driving 40 to 45 miles per hour; he immediately veered to the right shoulder and in the time it would take to snap his fingers twice the truck had struck the left rear of his vehicle; at the time of the impact he was completely off the road on the right shoulder; he did not see the wheel come off and he saw no sudden jerk or any sudden elevation of the front end of the Army truck.
Mrs. Phelps, who was in a car following the truck, saw it suddenly swerve to the left across the road; she saw no wheel come off and saw nothing “mechanically defective about the Army truck as it crossed the road.”
Mrs. Story, who was in an automobile following the Wood car, which was demolished, testified she just “noticed the Army truck coming over in our side of the lane,” and “it just left its lane off the road it was going east and we were going west. And it just came angling over and the grain truck (Stone) swerved his cab to * * She testified she did not see a wheel come off of the Army truck, and, when asked whether the Army truck looked level or tilted, she said: “Well, the best I remember it looked level.”
These are the only eye witnesses to the accident who testified at the trial.
An examination of the wheel showed that six of the ten steel studs, which were threaded with heavy or coarse threads into the velocity housing, had been pulled out of their threaded seating and two others were still firmly embedded in a part of the housing that had been literally torn away from the main part of the housing; two other studs were missing and not accounted for; the end of the axle assembly was not disfigured and no-marks on the road indicated that it had dropped to the road while the truck was still in forward motion.
*806There was a slightly bent portion of the right-hand fender and running board which, according to appellees’ theory, was caused by the wheel passing back and raising these elements sufficiently to cause the truck to lurch to the left. The diameter of the wheel and tire was much greater than the height of the running board from the ground, so that some unexplained force would have had to raise it sufficiently for the wheel to wedge under it enough to raise the right side of the truck. The running board was 22 inches from the pavement, and the wheel was 42% inches tall, so that this 42%-inch wheel would have to pass under a 22-inch high running board to achieve this effect. This would, of course, have canted the cab of the truck sharply to the left, but no eye witness saw any such tilt.
Then, if we assume that all of this happened, we must next believe that instead of this jammed wheel pulling the truck around to the right because of the tremendous drag thus created, the wedging of the 42%-inch tire under the 22-inch high running board in some way heaved the truck over towards the left, and all in such a way that it would not be noticed by the three eye witnesses who saw only that the truck angled over to the left in an apparently normal fashion.
I think that no careful analysis of the physical facts, most of which were without dispute, could possibly permit the conclusion that the accident occurred as opined by the plaintiffs’ single expert witness.
It is, of course, unusual for an appellate court to reverse the judgment of a trial court, even when sitting without a jury, on the weakness of the factual proof. We are, however, enjoined to do so when a finding of the trial court is clearly erroneous. I am firmly convinced that for the reasons stated this judgment was clearly erroneous, both because there was no adequate proof that would permit the making of an inference that the wheel came off before the accident and because even if there were such affirmative proof, it would be so contrary to known physical facts and physical laws as to be inherently unbelievable.
I would reverse the judgment on the main appeal and affirm on the cross-appeal.