Court Opinion

ID: 9669023
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 02:37:20.501996+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:15:51.488197
License: Public Domain

On Motion for Rehearing.
PER CURIAM.
Defendant’s motion for rehearing questions the holding in paragraph I, C, of the opinion upon the ground plaintiff’s trial theory was and plaintiff’s evidence established that defendant was precipitated onto the wrong side of the highway and against plaintiff’s automobile as the result of a blowout or flat tire, and, therefore, defendant was not actionably negligent.
Defendant also states we did not consider the following cases cited in his brief, to wit: Klein v. Beeten, 169 Wis. 385, 172 N.W. 736, 737, 5 A.L.R. 1237; Byerly v. Thorpe, 221 Wis. 28, 265 N.W. 76, 78; Zarrillo v. Stone, 317 Mass. 510, 58 N.E.2d 848; Otto v. Sellnow, 233 Minn. 215, 46 N.W.2d 641, 642, 645, 24 A.L.R.2d 152; Eubanks v. Kielsmeier, 171 Wash. 484, 18 P.2d 48, 51; Giddings v. Honan, 114 Conn. 473, 159 A. 271, 272 [7], 79 A.L.R. 1215. These cases involved an accident attributable to a blowout, or sudden deflation of an automobile tire, or, as in the Byerly case, what the court considered the equivalent of a blowout. They were considered and are in accord with the case of Seligman v. Orth, 205 Wis. 199, 236 N.W. 115, 116 [3], mentioned in the opinion and stressed by defendant, which case is illustrative of defendant’s above cited cases.
Defendant stresses excerpts from the record to the following effect: From plaintiff’s counsel’s opening statement to the effect that defendant’s truck [traveling 50 to 60 m. p. h.] suddenly started to cross into plaintiff’s lane of travel when within 150 to 200 feet of plaintiff’s car [traveling 25 to 30 m. p. h.] and when 100 to 130 feet away plaintiff noticed the truck’s left front tire was “either flat or low,” “flat or extremely low.” After the accident the tire was “flat.” And, from plaintiff’s testimony: Plaintiff saw defendant’s truck coming down the hill, weaving back and forth across the center line of the highway; and • when it was close enough to see, he noticed the tire on the truck was low. On cross-examination: Defendant’s truck was 50 to 60 feet away when, plaintiff “noticed the tire.” Plaintiff had noticed the truck weaving back up the hill but couldn’t see until it came closer “that his tire was getting low”; “was going down, pretty well down”; “getting pretty well flat, it looked to me like.”
Plaintiff also testified that he first saw the truck when it was “around 900 feet” from his car and: “Q. All right. Now, you say this truck was weaving as it came down the road? A. Absolutely. Q. Were its wheels shimmying? A." No, he was weaving.”
Plaintiff was not conclusively bound by the testimony, damaging, if so, to plaintiff, of his witness Virgil Wilson, stressed by defendant, that the left front tire of the truck “was plumb flat,” if such testimony conflicted, expressly or by inference, with other evidence on behalf of plaintiff. Hoffman v. Peerless White Lime Co., 317 Mo. 86, 296 S.W. 764, 773 [15]; Killinger v. Kansas City Pub. Serv. Co., Mo., 259 S.W.2d 391, 395 [2]; Suarez v. Thompson, Mo., 283 S.W.2d 584, 586 [1].
From the testimony and permissible inferences most favorable to plaintiff the jury could find that defendant continued to operate his truck in plaintiff’s view weaving back and forth across the center *37line of the highway with a low left front tire for several hundred feet; and that plaintiff did not notice that the left front tire of defendant’s truck was low or pretty well flat until it was within SO or 60 feet of plaintiff’s car. After again reviewing the record, we conclude plaintiff’s evidence did not compel a finding that a blowout or a suddenly deflated tire, the equivalent of a blowout, was the sole cause of the truck crossing the center line of the highway and striking plaintiff’s car; i. e., that the collision was an unavoidable accident exonerating defendant of negligence in the operation of his truck. Setting aside verdicts against the weight of conflicting probative evidence is a function reserved for the trial courts. State ex rel. Kansas City Public Service Co. v. Bland, 353 Mo. 1234, 187 S.W.2d 211 [6]; Wilcox v. Coons, 362 Mo. 381, 241 S.W.2d 907 [25]; Clark v. City of Springfield, Mo.App., 241 S.W.2d 100 [2].
The motion for rehearing is overruled.