Ayala v. Keota Mill & Elevator Co.

1998 OK 4, 952 P.2d 984, 69 O.B.A.J. 256, 1998 Okla. LEXIS 3, 1998 WL 20822
CourtSupreme Court of Oklahoma
DecidedJanuary 20, 1998
DocketNo. 86664
StatusPublished
Cited by3 cases

This text of 1998 OK 4 (Ayala v. Keota Mill & Elevator Co.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Oklahoma primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Ayala v. Keota Mill & Elevator Co., 1998 OK 4, 952 P.2d 984, 69 O.B.A.J. 256, 1998 Okla. LEXIS 3, 1998 WL 20822 (Okla. 1998).

Opinion

WATT, Justice:

FACTS AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND

11 In October 1991 plaintiff, Ayala, was a farmhand in the employ of the Gamble farm, owned by Ortho Gamble, Sr. Gamble Farm had bought fertilizer for its spinach crop from defendant, Keota Mill in Poteau, LeFlore County, Oklahoma. Keota Mill had agreed to load the fertilizer in two of its own bulk fertilizer trucks and lend the trucks to Gamble Farm so that Gamble Farm could apply the fertilizer to his spinach. Mike Gamble, and Ayala picked up the trucks from the Keota Mill on a Saturday and drove [985]*985about eight miles to. a convenience store where they stopped and went in to get something to eat. When they returned one of the trucks, a yellow Ford,, would not start. Instead of notifying Keota Mill that the truck would not start, Gamble and Ayala removed the air cleaner, “primed” the engine by pouring gasoline into the carburetor, and got the engine restarted. They then drove to Gamble Farm’s field, where they were once again unable to get the truck started. Gamble and Ayala again tried to prime the engine. At first, Gamble poured the gasoline and Ayala tried to start the truck. When the truck would not start, Gamble and Ayala traded places, with Ayala pouring, the gasoline and Gamble trying to start the engine. The truck backfired while Ayala was pouring the gasoline. The backfire started a gasoline fire, which badly burned Ayala. Ayala received a workers’ compensation award, but his workers’ compensation recovery was ultimately not an issue in the action against Keota Mill.

¶ 2 Ayala sued Keota Mill in the District Court of LeFlore County on December 5, 1994, after having previously filed and then dismissed a similar action in Haskell County, in September 1994. The case was tried on September 11 and 12,1995.

¶3 There was no proof that the yellow Ford truck had ever stalled before the day of Ayala’s accident. A former Keota Mill employee, Joe Wasson, testified that he had experienced “carburetor trouble,” and had asked a Keota Mill mechanic to look at it, but there was no proof that the truck had ever actually failed to start before the day of Ayala’s accident. Wasson admitted that the truck was operating appropriately when the Keota Mill mechanic inspected it, and that all he had ever had to do to start the truck was “pull the choke out ... and it would start.”

¶4 Ayala introduced the testimony of a mechanic, Bill Dick, who testified that priming was a common method of. getting a stalled engine restarted. Dick also testified that a properly maintained engine will not backfire.

¶ 5 The trial court had a record made of the parties’ oral arguments on Keota Mill’s motion for directed verdict. During the course of the argument, the trial court made clear its conviction that Keota Mill should have no liability because Gamble and Ayala undertook to work on a truck that they knew would not start. Despite the trial court’s stated misgivings about Ayala’s case, the court submitted the case to the jury, apparently without ever formally ruling on Keota Mill’s motion for directed verdict. The jury returned a verdict for $800,000.00 with no reduction for Ayala’ own contributory negligence, or Gamble’s negligence. Keota Mill filed a renewed motion for directed verdict and a motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict, which the trial court granted. Ayala appealed, and the Court of Civil Appeals, Division 3, affirmed, with one judge dissenting.

DISCUSSION

The Standard of Review

¶ 6 Title 12 O.S.Supp.1997 § 698 provides in material part:

When a motion for a directed verdict made at the close of all of the evidence should have been granted, the court - shall, at the request of the moving party, grant judgment in the moving party’s favor, although a verdict has been found against the moving party ...

Under § 698, if Keota’s motion for directed verdict should have been granted then the trial-court correctly entered judgment notwithstanding the verdict for it, although the jury found against Keota. We hold that the trial court should have granted Keota’s motion for directed verdict, and correctly did grant its motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict.

A Bailor is Not Liable to A Bailee or a Third Party for Patent Defects in the Bailed Article nor for Injuries Caused by Use of the Bailed Article for a Purpose not Known by the Bailor to be Intended.

¶7 In the trial court and in his brief in chief Ayala argued, correctly, that the law of bailment applies to this case. He relied on Bush v. Middleton, 1959 OK 116, 340 P.2d 474, 477-78 for the proposition that the owner of a vehicle who permits another [986]*986to use the vehicle may be held hable to the bailee or a third party for death or damage caused by a defect in the vehicle. Ayala admitted that liability depends on the fact that the defect “was not known to the bail-ee.” Bush 340 P.2d at 477-78.1 In Bush a used car dealer loaned a car to a prospective buyer who struck the plaintiff when the car’s brakes failed. Middleton claimed the brakes were not defective because they worked when pumped first. We held that a fact question existed as to whether the bailee-driver knew that the brakes were defective.

¶ 8 In its opinion the Court of Civil Appeals did not deal with the law.of bailment. Instead, it discussed only the .question of what sort of intervening cause is sufficient to break the chain of causation so as to relieve one guilty of negligence of liability. The Court of Civil Appeals held that the chain of causation was broken because Ayala poured a “cup full of gasoline in the carburetor,” whereas the “act of priming” might have been foreseeable had a lesser amount of gasoline been poured into the carburetor. For the reasons discussed in the balance of this opinion, we reject the Court of Civil Appeals’s analysis and hold that Keota Mill owed no duty to Ayala under the facts presented in this appeal.

¶ 9 On certiorari Ayala argues that there was not a supervening cause sufficient to insulate Keota Mill from liability. We need not deal with the proximate cause cases cited by Ayala, and relied on by the Court of Civil Appeals, because Keota Mill as a bailor had no duty to warn Ayala of the defect in the truck. As noted, none of the cases Ayala cited in his petition for certiorari, nor those relied on by the Court of Civil Appeals, dealt with the law of bailment.

¶ 10 We addressed a bailor’s obligation to a third-party in Lee Eller Ford, Inc. v. Herod, 1960 OK 111, 353 P.2d 702. There defendant bailor had loaned a car to a prospective purchaser who ran out of gasoline. Plaintiff was injured when her car struck the bailed car while it was being towed, and plaintiff sued the bailor. We reversed the trial court for having failed to grant the bailor’s motion for directed verdict because “ordinarily bail- or’s liability may not be predicated on a defect in the vehicle which arises following the bailment.” [Emphasis added.] Herod, 353 P.2d at 704.

¶ 11 In Moore v. City of Ardmore, 1940 OK -, 188 Okla. 74, 106 P.2d 515 we held that the bailor of a small boat was not liable to the plaintiffs decedent, who had rented the boat from the bailor. There, the boat capsized in a sudden storm and decedent drowned.

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Bluebook (online)
1998 OK 4, 952 P.2d 984, 69 O.B.A.J. 256, 1998 Okla. LEXIS 3, 1998 WL 20822, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/ayala-v-keota-mill-elevator-co-okla-1998.