Clauser v. Jennings

428 S.W.2d 3, 1968 Mo. App. LEXIS 714
CourtMissouri Court of Appeals
DecidedApril 26, 1968
DocketNo. 8727
StatusPublished
Cited by1 cases

This text of 428 S.W.2d 3 (Clauser v. Jennings) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Missouri Court of Appeals primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Clauser v. Jennings, 428 S.W.2d 3, 1968 Mo. App. LEXIS 714 (Mo. Ct. App. 1968).

Opinion

STONE, Judge.

In this damage suit for personal injuries alleged to have been sustained in a vehicular collision, plaintiff Frank D. Clauser appeals from the adverse judgment entered upon a unanimous jury verdict for defendant Alexander Jennings. The sole point relied on here is that the trial court erred in giving defendant’s instruction 6, which submitted the alleged contributory negligence of plaintiff in failing to swerve or to slacken speed and swerve. There is no attack upon the form of instruction 6, and the only complaint is that “there was no evidence of contributory negligence of the plaintiff to support the giving of such instruction.” Cf. Kratzer v. King, Mo., 401 S.W.2d 405, 407(1). This requires a factual review, during which we remain mindful of the injunction that, in determining the sufficiency of the evidence to support the submission in instruction 6, we must consider the evidence in the light most favorable to defendant, must accord to him the benefit of all helpful inferences reasonably deducible therefrom, and must disregard plaintiff’s evidence except as it tends to support the grounds of contributory negligence submitted in the instruction. Jackson v. Skelly Oil Co., Mo. (banc), 413 S.W. 2d 239, 242(2); Tomlin v. Alford, Mo., 351 S.W.2d 705, 711(5); Highfill v. Brown, Mo. (banc), 340 S.W.2d 656, 661(7); Dial v. Seven-Up Bottling Co., Mo., 373 S.W.2d 53, 57(8); Emert v. St. Louis Public Service Co., Mo., 370 S.W.2d 366, 368-369(3); Slates v. Joplin Butane Gas Co., Mo., 315 S.W.2d 808, 813(5); Schmidt v. Windish, Mo., 304 S.W.2d 891, 894(3).

The accident under consideration occurred about 10:30 A.M. on Saturday, September 12, 1959, a warm, dry day, at the intersection of Missouri State Highway 32, an [5]*5east-west highway with a two-lane blacktop roadway 24 feet in width, and Iron County Route Y, a north-south road. This was a “T-intersection” in that Route Y entered from the north but did not extend to the south of Highway 32; and it also may be described as a “Y-intersection” or a “delta intersection” in that Route Y flared out and its hard-surfaced roadway bifurcated as it approached Highway 32, so that the mouth of Route Y was about 55 feet in width, east and west, at the north edge of Highway 32. The entire mouth of Route Y was relatively level, and the space between the curving prongs of the forked hard-surfaced roadway of Route Y was graveled. Near the center of that graveled area between the curving prongs and at a point some 8 to 10 feet north of the north edge of the blacktop pavement on Highway 32, a red octagonal “STOP” sign, mounted on a wooden post 7 or 8 feet above ground level, faced toward the north thus directing traffic on Route Y to stop before entering Highway 32. Immediately east of the mouth of Route Y there was a dirt and gravel shoulder about 4 feet in width on the north side of the 24-foot blacktop roadway on Highway 32.

Plaintiff, then 17 years of age, was driving his father’s 1959 Chevrolet sedan, in which his parents, two cousins and an aunt also were riding, in a westerly direction on Highway 32, approaching the intersection with Route Y from the east. Defendant, a farmer then 69 years of age who resided in that neighborhood, was driving his Ford pickup, in which one Robert L. Crocker also was riding, in a southerly direction on Route Y, approaching the intersection from the north and intending to make a left turn to the east onto Highway 32.

When plaintiff in the westbound Chevrolet, then traveling at a speed estimated by him at 45 miles per hour, was (so he said) “maybe 200 or 300 feet” east of the intersection, he first noticed defendant’s Ford pickup then “back about 30 or 35 feet” from Highway 32 and thus in that fork of the bifurcated roadway at the mouth of Route Y which curved to the east of the “STOP” sign. Defendant’s pickup was moving “slowly” at a rate of speed which plaintiff first stated he could not estimate but subsequently reckoned at “maybe 5 miles an hour, between 5 and 10.” We interrupt plaintiff’s account to note in this connection that, frankly admitting the Ford pickup did not stop in obedience to the sign, defendant estimated its speed at 12 to 15 miles per hour as he approached and moved onto the blacktop pavement of Highway 32, and that witness Crocker, the passenger in the pickup, estimated its speed at that time at 10 to 12 miles per hour. Whatever the precise speed of the pickup may have been, plaintiff anticipated that it would yield the right-of-way to him and did not change the speed of his Chevrolet when he first sighted the other vehicle — “I wanted to hold it [my speed] the same.” However, defendant’s pickup “kept moving on out * * * instead of stopping at the stop sign,” so “when I [plaintiff] got up closer” — “when I finally got about 60 or 75 feet [distant], I finally began to realize he wasn’t going to stop” and “I applied my brakes and skidded.” “When I first applied them [the brakes] * * * he [defendant] was just pulling into the westbound lane [of the two-lane blacktop pavement on Highway 32], his front was just in it.” Investigating trooper Mills testified that he found “tire marks or skid marks” which “measured 50 feet * * * with the front wheels and 60 feet with the rear wheels * * * leading up to where the vehicle [plaintiff’s Chevrolet] actually stopped.” These tire marks were in the westbound or north lane of the two-lane pavement on Highway 32, with the marks made by the right wheels of the Chevrolet “in the neighborhood of 3 or 4 feet” south of the north edge of the pavement.

Since defendant was making a left turn to the east onto Highway 32, his Ford pickup was headed in a southeasterly direction at “about a 45 degree angle” as it entered and moved across the westbound lane on [6]*6Highway 32. Plaintiff stated that, at the moment of impact, the front end of defendant’s pickup was at or perhaps “a little” south of the center line of the pavement on Highway 32 with the front wheels of the pickup “either on the [center] line or still in my [westbound] lane.” Trooper Mills found the debris “near the center line” and, on his official report received in evidence without objection, platted the point of accident on the center line. The left front corner of plaintiff’s Chevrolet (the only portion of that vehicle shown in the photographs to have been damaged) struck the left side of defendant’s angling pickup just in front of the door, with the collision described by defendant as a “sideswipe, that is all I would call it.” According to plaintiff, the result was that “the rear end [of his Chevrolet] slid around toward the [north] ditch” and defendant’s pickup “was shoved over a little more in his own [south] lane.” That neither vehicle was damaged extensively was evidenced by the post-accident photographs in evidence and was confirmed by the fact that, after the trooper’s investigation, defendant completed in the pickup his intended trip to Ironton, more than 30 miles from the scene of accident. Disclaiming any injury, defendant said “I didn’t get no jolt.”

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Bluebook (online)
428 S.W.2d 3, 1968 Mo. App. LEXIS 714, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/clauser-v-jennings-moctapp-1968.