Court Opinion

ID: 9670500
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 03:21:44.503323+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:04.635666
License: Public Domain

Lee, J.
dissenting.
*20It is elemental that this Court will not reverse a judgment, founded on the verdict of a jury, if there is substantial evidence to sustain such verdict.
Believing implicitly that the jury had substantial evidence on which to decide the issue as it did, I can not agree that the verdict is contrary to the great weight of the evidence.
All of the witnesses agreed that it was at least 800 feet from the intersection south to a bridge on Highway 45.
■ The defendant Miller, traveling in his pickup truck on the Saltillo Road, came to the intersection with U. S. Highway 45. He stopped seven or eight feet from the edge of the pavement. According to his testimony, he looked south and saw below the bridge a car traveling north. He had crossed this intersection many times and had never had any trouble getting over the intersection when a car was that far away. He looked north and no vehicle was approaching from that direction. He then put his vehicle in low gear and started across. He was “about the center of the highway” when a horn blew. Looking in that direction, he saw the car coming toward him at a terrific rate of speed. He was scared and “floor-boarded it in low to get out of the way”, that is, he ran as fast as he could go in low gear. He had gone, as he surmised, 150 feet across the intersection when he looked around and saw the car turning over, about 80 or 100 feet north of the intersection, According to Frank Morrow, a witness for the plaintiff, the Pontiac, operated by Meo, when he sounded its horn, was about 100 feet from the pickup. This witness also said that, when the Pontiac went through the intersection, “the front wheels of the pickup truck were at the edge of the pavement on the west side * * * that would put the back of the pickup across the center line”. Mrs. Lynette Sullivan, in an •automobile near the intersection, saw Miller stop long enough to see that nothing was coming either way. She did not see the Pontiac until it was missing the pickup. *21The pickup at that time was “half way across the road, the hack of his truck. Q. Was past the center line? A. Yes.”
The plaintiff admitted that the speed of his car at the •time was “at least forty-five miles an hour”. His wife said that it was “between fifty and sixty miles an hour. Frank Morrow said “forty-five to fifty miles an hour”. Bill Baines, another witness for the plaintiff, said “between forty and fifty”. Claude Baines, another witness for plaintiff said “between forty-five and fifty miles”. Frank Morrow said that the skidding of the Pontiac started “almost at the time the horn blew”, which, according to his testimony, was 100 feet from the pickup. Tom McCarthy, who came up to the scene several minutes later, corroborated Morrow about the skidding and testified that the car continued to skid after it left the pavement for “fifty or sixty or maybe seventy-five” feet. The defendant Miller testified that the Pontiac “was really flying * * * looked like seventy-five or eight miles”.
Taking into consideration all of the evidence as to speed, including the estimates of the witnesses and the physical facts as to skidding, together with the reasonable inferences therefrom, the jury, in my opinion, were well warranted in finding that the Pontiac was traveling at a speed equal to, or in excess of, sixty miles an hour. Traveling at that rate of speed, it would have taken only nine to ten seconds for the car to negotiate the distance between the bridge and the intersection.
I therefore think that the jury had sufficient evidence to find that the speed of the Pontiac was so great that Miller, after stopping and looking, as the law required him to do, was almost run over by it before he could get across the intersection and out of the way. We have come to a pretty pass in this country if a motorist must not try to cross over a highway intersection, if another motorist, on one of these highways, is as close as 800 feet to the intersection.
*22Now Meo testified that, as he came over the bridge, he noticed the pickup at the intersection, and that when he was within thirty or forty feet, the pickup pulled out in front of him and stopped “in the middle of the highway”. Mrs. Meo testified that their car was “about fifty feet” from the intersection when the pickup pulled out. Frank Morrow said that the pickup was pulling across the intersection when he heard the horn blow, which occurred when the Pontiac was about 100 feet from the intersection, according to his evidence. Bill Raines testified that the Pontiac was “sixty, seventy, maybe eighty feet” from the intersection when the pickup started across. Claude Raines testified that it was “seventy or eighty” feet.
If the speed of the Pontiac was as much as sixty miles an hour, it would travel eighty-eight feet in one second. If as low as forty miles an hour, it would travel almost sixty feet in one second. To me, it is incredible that Miller could have started his pickup in low gear from a point seven or eight feet east of the pavment and could have gotten to the middle of the pavement in one second. The Pontiac, traveling so much faster, either would have beaten it through the intersection, or a collision would have been inescapable. I think this evidence was so improbable and unreasonable that the jury was warranted in rejecting it.
Meo admitted that the pickup had stopped at the intersection and that he saw it on the east side of the highway, headed west, when he came over the ridge. At that time, he was at least 800 feet from the pickup. What should a motor vehicle, standing a few feet from the edge of the pavement at an intersection, signify to any reasonable or prudent man? Obviously, that the motorist was expecting to cross over the intersection. Thus when Meo was 800 feet from the intersection, he knew, or in the exercise of reasonable care, ought to have known, that the car at the intersection was about to *23cross. Ordinary care, under the circumstances, required him to reduce his speed and get his vehicle under control. Section 8176 (a) 3, Code of 1942 Anno., fixes the maximum speed of private passenger vehicles at sixty miles an hour; and (b) thereof provides that “the driver or operator of any motor vehicle must decrease speed when approaching and crossing an intersection * * I think the jury were fully warranted in finding that the plaintiff wholly failed to exercise reasonable care, and completely ignored the injunction of the law, namely, to slow down as he was approaching the crossing; and that his dangerous rate of speed, under the circumstances, was the sole proximate cause of his injury:
With the greatest deference to the majority I think that Jones v. Carter, 192 Miss. 603, 7 So. 2d 519, is directly in point for a decision of this case. The collision in that case occurred on Highway 80, running east and west, with a standard twenty-foot pavement. The driver of a west bound automobile could not see the intersection until he got within 468 feet. Neither could a person, on or about the intersection, see an automobile approaching from the east until it was within 468 feet thereof. Jones started his car from a point 44 feet south of the pavement and drove northeastwardly across the diagonal intersection. His front wheels had gotten onto the gravel on the north side of the pavement and his back wheels- were about half way between the center stripe and the north edge of the pavement, when his car was struck by the Carter car, which did not undertake to reduce its speed until it was within forty-three feet of the Jones car. The jury found a verdict for Mrs. Carter. On appeal here, this Court in an opinion written by Justice McG-ehee said that “the case presented is extremely close on the question as to whether the defendant was entitled to a peremptory instruction in his behalf. At any rate, we are of the opinion that the case should be reversed and remanded on account of *24the verdict being contrary to the overwhelming wéight of the evidence. ’ ’ The case was reversed and remanded.
On the second trial, the jury again returned a verdict for the plaintiff. On appeal here, Jones v. Carter, 195 Miss. 182, 13 So. 2d 623, this Court again reversed and remanded the case. Judge Griffith, who wrote the opinion, said: “We are no more impressed with the merits as regards the plaintiff’s action than we were on the consideration of the first record, which we have carefully compared with what is shown on the present record. We are impressed now as we were then, that what we have here is simply another case of that which is seen every day by any who travel in automobiles on the streets or highways of this state, or who as pedestrians observe that travel, namely, that many, if not most of those who are proceeding upon through highways, do so upon the arrogated assumption that they have the right to drive thereon at any undiminished speed which they may elect for themselves and that those who have first arrived, and are about to cross, at an intersection must yield so long as the driver on the through highway has appeared within sight, and regardless of the speed at which he is driving. This is not the law as, in substance, we pointed out in the former opinion. * * * We therefore again reverse on the ground that the verdict is against the manifest weight of the evidence * *
In that case, Carter had only 468 feet within which to see the Jones car and decrease his speed in order to prevent a collision; and a.verdict in Mrs. Carter’s behalf was twice held to be against the manifest weight of the evidence.
In the case here, Meo had 800 feet within which to decrease his speed and avoid a collision. Instead of doing so, he operated his Pontiac at a rate of speed, which the jury was warranted in finding to be eq'ual to or in excess of sixty miles an hour. He did not collide *25with, the Miller pickup, hut ran off of the road instead. Although the jury returned a verdict against Meo and in favor of Miller the majority opinion holds that the verdict, so returned, is against the great weight of the evidence. I cannot reconcile this action with the two holdings in Jones v. Carter, supra.
Holmes and Gillespie, JJ., join in this dissent.