Burns v. Wheeler

446 P.2d 925, 103 Ariz. 525, 1968 Ariz. LEXIS 314
CourtArizona Supreme Court
DecidedNovember 6, 1968
Docket8576
StatusPublished
Cited by11 cases

This text of 446 P.2d 925 (Burns v. Wheeler) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Arizona Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Burns v. Wheeler, 446 P.2d 925, 103 Ariz. 525, 1968 Ariz. LEXIS 314 (Ark. 1968).

Opinion

McFARLAND, Chief Justice:

Plaintiff-appellant, Donald R. Burns, hereinafter referred to as Burns, sued defendants-appellees, Vinton Earl Wheeler and Boyer Electric Company, hereinafter referred to as Wheeler and Boyer, respectively, for personal injuries received in a collision between plaintiff’s motorcycle and defendant’s automobile. The jury found for defendants, and plaintiff appealed.

Most of the facts are clear, but there are some details that are either vague or in dispute. At the trial some of those details may have been clarified by witnesses who stated that the impact took place “here” and the warning flags were “there,” etc. While the use of a blackboard or diagram is of great help during a trial, the failure to make clear what “here” and “there” mean, together with the failure to transmit the diagram as part of the record, make it impossible for this Court to be sure of exactly what the witnesses meant by some of the things they said.

The paved portion of Thomas Road, at the place of the accident, was twenty feet wide, and consisted of two ten-foot lanes of traffic — one eastbound and one westbound. Burns, who was fourteen years old, was driving a motorcycle west on that street, with another boy named Rickey Gil-breath seated on the cycle behind him. Wheeler was driving his car east on the same street. North of the street, near the property line, a new Circle K Market was being constructed. The city had made an excavation on the lot in order to lay a pipe to the street, and there were both the hole thus made and a pile of dirt just north of the dirt shoulder on the north edge of the pavement. “Cones” had been placed on the ground both east and west of the dirt pile, and there was also a tripod with warning-flags. The exact location of the cones is. not clear, but they appear to have been placed along the north edge of the pavement and were undoubtedly intended to call motorists’ attention to the dirt pile and the-hole, so that they would avoid the immediate area, protect their vehicles, and watch, out for the men working.

Wheeler was an electrician in the employ of Boyer who was doing the electrical work on the new building. Shortly after noon Wheeler was returning from lunch in his own car, on his own time. He was not being paid for the lunch period or for the use of his car. He was driving east on. Thomas Road, and it was his intention to make a left turn from the street on to the lot on which the market was being built. He reduced his twenty-mile-an-hour speed’, to five or ten miles per hour, and gave a hand signal for a left turn. Following behind him were two cars, the second one-being driven by a minister named Stevens.. As Wheeler slowed down and started to make his turn, he did not see Burns approaching on the motorcycle. He did, however, see a truck backing out from the Circle K lot, and he slowed nearly to a stop, keeping his eyes on the truck to make-sure that it would not back into his path. As the car passed nearly across the westbound lane of traffic, the motorcycle hit the right front fender of Wheeler’s car,, throwing the driver and the passenger from the motorcycle into the air. Wheeler-saw them for the first time at the instant. *527 of impact. Burns's passenger, Gilbreath, never saw the Wheeler car at all, as he was looking at some young female pedestrians. Burns, the driver of the motorcycle, did not see the car until the moment of impact. Both Wheeler’s negligence and Burns’s contributory negligence were submitted to the jury, which brought in a verdict for defendant.

Prior to giving the case to the jury, the court directed the jury to bring in a verdict for defendant Boyer, and this was done. Burns assigns this as error. The uncontradicted evidence was to the effect that, at the time of the accident, Wheeler was on his lunch hour in his own car at his own expense and during time for which he was not being paid. His employer, Boyer, had no control over his actions at the time. The law is settled in this State that, under such circumstances, travel by the employee is not within the scope of his employment. Butler v. Industrial Commission of Arizona, 50 Ariz. 516, 73 P.2d 703; McKay v. Industrial Commission, 103 Ariz. 191, 438 P.2d 757. It is clear, therefore, that the direction of a verdict in favor of Wheeler’s employer, Boyer, was proper.

Burns next assigns as error the failure of the trial court to withdraw the issue of plaintiff’s contributory negligence from the jury. Contributory negligence, if any, in this case, must be predicated upon Burns’s admission that he did not see Wheeler’s car until the instant of impact. From this one might conclude that Burns was negligent in failing to keep a proper look-out toward the road ahead. Burns’s argument is that even though he was not looking ahead, his failure to do so had nothing to do with the accident, because even though he had seen Wheeler’s car and had kept it in view constantly, Burns could not have avoided the accident. Burns’s reasoning is as follows: As the vehicles approached, Burns’s motorcycle was in the westbound lane, and Wheeler’s car was in the eastbound lane. There was no danger of a collision and no reason to slow down or to anticipate that Wheeler was going to turn left in front of Burns. By the time Wheeler started his turn he was going about five miles per hour, which is about 71/2 feet per second. At the time of the impact, Wheeler’s car had traversed three-fourths of the westbound lane (ten feet wide) so that the car’s movement over that distance took only one second. At Burns’s estimated speed of twenty to thirty miles per hour, he argues, he could not have stopped his motorcycle in one second, so the collision would have occurred anyway.

This argument has several flaws in it, and it ignores all of the contrary evidence. First, it ignores the following testimony of Burns’s passenger, Rickey Gilbreath:

“A. We had to slow to go around some cones.
“Q. Now when you went around these cones, did you go around them to the right or to the left?
“A. To the right.
“Q. How far from the North edge of the paved portion of Thomas, were these cones ?
“A. They were right on the edge.
"Q. Then they weren’t put into the pavement at all ?
“A. * * * All I remember is that we went around the cones at the speed of a walk.
“Q. When you went around these cones did you have to go on to the dirt ?
“A. Yes, Sir.”

If this was a correct statement of fact, then the motorcycle, instead of proceeding along the westbound lane of traffic, went off the paved portion of the street onto the dirt shoulder on the north side of the street, even though the cones did not extend onto the paved portion. The jury could have found this act to be contributory negligence. Furthermore, the witness described the cycle’s speed at that point as the “speed of a walk,” which is normally about three miles per hour, and would have given the motorcycle driver plenty of time to stop and avoid the accident. Second, it

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Bluebook (online)
446 P.2d 925, 103 Ariz. 525, 1968 Ariz. LEXIS 314, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/burns-v-wheeler-ariz-1968.