Barrett v. Posey

343 S.W.2d 337, 1961 Tex. App. LEXIS 1716
CourtCourt of Appeals of Texas
DecidedJanuary 26, 1961
Docket13421
StatusPublished
Cited by4 cases

This text of 343 S.W.2d 337 (Barrett v. Posey) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Texas primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Barrett v. Posey, 343 S.W.2d 337, 1961 Tex. App. LEXIS 1716 (Tex. Ct. App. 1961).

Opinion

WERLEIN, Justice.

This suit was filed by appellant, M. O. Barrett, individually and as next friend for his seven year old son, Bruce Barrett, against Michael Posey, appellee, to recover damages sustained by Bruce, and hospital and medical expenses incurred, when the child was struck by appellee’s 1946 Ford coupe about 7:50 a. m. on February 12, 1957, while appellee was driving east in the 1700 block on Turner Drive in the City of Houston.

In response to the Special Issues the jury found that appellee “failed to keep a proper lookout” which was a proximate cause of the event. It was also found that Bruce “failed to keep a proper lookout” and that “immediately prior to the occurrence * * * Bruce Barrett ran from the driveway into the street into the path of the automobile” and this was negligence, and each act of negligence was a proximate cause of the event. The jury found that appellants sustained damages in the sum of $6,833 together with $1,000 for medical bills.

Appellants moved that the findings on Bruce’s contributory negligence be disregarded and for judgment in their behalf. This motion was overruled and judgment was rendered for appellee.

In Points One and Two appellants assert the Trial Court erred in failing to disregard the jury’s findings that Bruce Barrett was guilty of either act of contributory negligence and in refusing to enter judgment for them, and, alternatively, in refusing to grant their motion for new trial because such findings were so against the great and overwhelming preponderance of the evidence as to be clearly wrong. A discussion of these Points requires a review of the evidence.

Turner Drive is a straight, blacktop street, running east and west. At the point where the accident occurred the paved portion was about 21 feet wide with a gravel pathway on the south side about 2 or 3 feet in width. The Barrett home was located at 1730 Turner Drive on the south side of the street facing north on a lot 75 feet wide. Adjacent on the west was the Thompson home, which was located on a lot of the same width. It too faced north and appears to have been about 40 feet south of the street. Each house had a separate shell driveway on the west side of the lot. This placed the driveways about 75 feet apart. Between the gravel (or shell) shoulder of *339 the street and the front of the lots there was a ditch about 3 feet deep. The evidence showed there was no means of getting from the Barrett or Thompson houses to the street except by using the driveways, unless one “walked down through the ditches.” There were several cedar trees near the east side of the Thompson driveway and also a line of trees near their east line. On the west side there was another tree and some shrubbery though none appears to have been closer to the street than 20 feet.

The investigating officer, P. E. Leak, testified that Posey pointed' out the spot where Bruce’s body was thrown in the ditch a few feet east of the Barrett driveway. He found no dirt, debris or skid marks on the road. Posey pointed out a spot “two feet north of the south edge of the street” as the place Bruce was struck. It was about 45 feet west of the point where Bruce was thrown and about 60 feet from where Posey said his car stopped. The only damage to appellee’s car was to the right front headlight and fender. Several pictures showed that the headlight was pushed back into the fender. Posey told him “he was going east on Turner Drive at approximately 30 miles per hour and the first time he saw the boy he just saw a head over the right front part of his right front fender.” The boy “was standing.” Posey said, “He was right on top of it. He didn’t have time to hit his brakes.” The officer testified there was a two-foot gravel shoulder to the side of the paved portion of the highway, but no sidewalks. Mr. Leak stated that the reaction time to get one’s foot on the brake with a vehicle moving 30 miles per hour is 46.1 feet. Appellee, so the witness said, offered no excuse for not seeing Bruce although a motorist approaching the scene could see for several blocks. The officer’s records showed the car continued straight without swerving to the right or to the left.

Mrs. Delma Barrett, Bruce’s mother, was in her house when the accident occurred. Some ten minutes before she had told Bruce and his older brother, John, to ask Mrs. Thompson to take them to school, she having discovered earlier that her car wouldn’t start. They had gone next door. She heard the collision but couldn’t believe it was her boy. Shocked for a few minutes, she finally went out. Bruce was in the ditch east of their driveway in front of her house. She rode in the ambulance with Bruce to the hospital. After Bruce was in the hospital, she asked John, “How did it happen?” He said, “Mamma, we were coming back from Mrs. Thompson’s” and “halfway between Mrs. Thompson’s and our driveway he got hit.” That is all he ever told her.

Appellee, Michael Posey, called by appellants as an adverse witness, testified he was 19 years old at the time of the collision. On that morning he was driving his 1946 Ford" to work as he had been doing for about four months. During that time he “had many times gone up and down Turner Drive at approximately 8 o’clock in the morning.” He had observed that children walked up and down that street on the way to school. He had seen that many times and “knew they were there.” He knew, too, that there were no sidewalks and they usually walked “along the edge of the street, sometimes on the pavement.” He was driving “in the neighborhood of 30 miles per hour.” He didn’t see Bruce until he was “about a foot” in front of him. Bruce was awful close. Appellee said he was “looking straight ahead” watching “a car up there coming down the road” to meet him “about a half a mile away.” Turner Drive is “long, straight and flat at that point” and there were no cars between him and the car he was watching. He was looking straight ahead when “all of a sudden” Bruce appeared in front of him. He “didn’t see him dart out there in the street.” He didn’t tell his lawyer Bruce “darted out in the street from the driveway” nor was he telling the jury that. Posey also testified that the driveways were the only two places along there to get from *340 the street without crossing and getting down into the ditch.

He said, too, that after his car “had come to a standstill 20 feet still separated Bruce’s body from the back end” of his car; that he never sounded his horn; never put on his brakes before he hit Bruce, nor swerved his car. He didn’t know how much he would have had to swerve his car to miss Bruce because he “didn’t know he was there.” He “didn’t see him.” If he had seen him, he “would have swerved to try to miss him.”

He also testified he never told his counsel that “Bruce and John were playing in the Thompsons’ driveway”; that he didn’t see them playing there; and he didn’t know where Bruce was looking. Neither did he see Bruce run from any driveway. He agreed, too, that if Bruce had run from the Thompsons’ driveway and from there was knocked beyond his own driveway, he would have knocked Bruce more than 75 feet and he didn’t do that. He didn’t know “where he [Bruce] came from”; he saw him “just a split second” and then “I hit him.” At that time Bruce was on the pavement and the right-hand side of his automobile was about 3 feet from the south edge. Bruce “was right in front of the right front headlight.”

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Bluebook (online)
343 S.W.2d 337, 1961 Tex. App. LEXIS 1716, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/barrett-v-posey-texapp-1961.