Gaines v. Campbell

166 S.E. 704, 159 Va. 504, 1932 Va. LEXIS 213
CourtSupreme Court of Virginia
DecidedNovember 17, 1932
StatusPublished
Cited by28 cases

This text of 166 S.E. 704 (Gaines v. Campbell) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Virginia primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Gaines v. Campbell, 166 S.E. 704, 159 Va. 504, 1932 Va. LEXIS 213 (Va. 1932).

Opinion

Holt, J.,

delivered the opinion of the court.

Plaintiff’s decedent, Mabel Campbell, was killed in a highway collision between a motorcycle and an automobile. Her administrator recovered a judgment confirmed by the court. The defendant has appealed.

The.deceased had lived in Bedford county, Virginia, and a short time before her death was enrolled as a student in the Harrisonburg State Teachers College. Her sister, Thelma, her brother, Troy, and two cousins, Opal and Carl Grant, on the day of her death, came on motorcycles to visit her in Harrisonburg. Thelma and her brother rode on one and the Grant boys on another. Soon after their arrival in that town they and Mabel Campbell decided, to visit some friends in Bridgewater, and went upon their way, Thelma and her brother, Troy, on one machine, followed by the Grants with their cousin Mabel on another. The Grant motorcycle was driven by Opal. Carl sat behind him. In front was Mabel, sidewise on the gas tank, facing the right. This tank is a flat-topped container, ten inches across, placed between the driver’s seat and the steering rod. They moved west on Grace street, and at its intersection with High street turned to their left and to the south. An attached plat helps us to place the evidence. High street is an arterial highway; Grace is a tributary street. At their east intersection on Grace is a sign, “Stop.” These streets do not cross at right angles, and their southeast intersection is on a curve and not at an angle.

Plaintiff claims that the Opal Grant motorcycle moved along the north side of Grace street until it was near and. to the right of the stop sign, where, in obedience to that signal, it halted; afterwards it moved across, or partly across, High street at a proper speed and to the right, going [510]*510south, when it came into collision with defendant’s automobile, driven on the wrong side of the road, recklessly and rapidly.

The defendant, denying negligence, has charged contributory negligence, and in his statement claimed that the

trip itself was a joint venture, that the motorcycle was moving at illegal speed on the wrong side of the road, and that it was negligence per se for three people to undertake to ride on it. If we accept his testimony, he was to the right of the center of High street, going north at the rate of about twenty-five miles an hour, when he first saw the [511]*511motorcycle, which passed without let-up to the left of the stop sign on Grace street, and came rapidly south on the east side of High street; that a head-on collision seemed imminent, and in the sudden emergency thus created he, to save himself and them, cut short to the left.

He said: “When I first saw the motorcycle I took my foot oif of the accelerator and slowed up and saw at the last moment that there was no way to avoid it unless I cut short to the left.”

Three people should not undertake to ride on an ordinary motorcycle, and if the crowding thus occasioned contributes to an accident, they have themselves to blame; but recovery cannot be defeated' merely because Mabel Campbell was negligent. Negligence is no defense unless contributory.

The limitations which this rule imposes are well stated by Mr. Justice Epes in Virginian Railway Co. v. Haley, 156 Va. 350, 157 S. E. 776, 784, where he said: “The rule applicable to all actions for the recovery of damages for an act of negligence is that there can be no recovery unless the negligence of the defendant, or that for which the defendant in law must answer, to some degree, or in some way, contributed proximately, and not remotely, to causing the damage for which recovery is sought.”

Mabel Campbell was a small woman, somewhere between five feet two inches and five feet two and one-half inches high. Opal Grant, the driver, was a tall man—height six feet two inches. His evidence is that he could see over her head, and that her position in no wise interfered with his management of the motorcycle. In this he is supported by his brother, Carl. Both of them are experienced drivers.

On the other hand, the evidence for the defendant, particularly that of Lester Jones, a motorcycle traffic officer, is to the effect that a woman, seated as Miss Campbell was, would interfere with the driver’s vision, with the shifting of gears and with the application of brakes.

[512]*512In an instruction offered on behalf of the defendant this matter was submitted to the jury. It held with the plaintiff. That verdict we cannot disturb unless the evidence to support it is intrinsically incredible. When competent and unimpeached witnesses clash, the issue is usually for the jury and courts can interfere only in extraordinary circumstances. Here we must abide by its finding.

Was Miss Campbell a party to some joint adventure? If so the negligence of her associates can be imputed to her, but not otherwise. The major test, when we undertake to impute to a plaintiff the negligence of her driver, is this: Was he her agent, and did she have any control over the management of the car? Not until these facts- are established can the doctrine of “joint enterprise” be invoked.

“The ‘joint enterprise’ which will render the contributory negligence of a driver imputable to a person riding with him must invest such person with some voice in the control and direction of the vehicle. The rule is founded upon the doctrine of principal and agent. The passenger must be so related to the driver as that the maxim ‘qui facit per alium facit per se’ is applicable. As said by this court in Virginia R. & P. Co. v. Gorsuch, 120 Va. 655, 91 S. E. 632, Ann. Cas. 1918B, 838: ‘The doctrine of imputable negligence has been discussed and the books are full of cases dealing with the question. There are some conflicts in the decisions, but it may be regarded as settled by the overwhelming weight of authority that the negligence of the driver of an automobile will not be imputed to a mere passenger, unless the passenger has or exercises control over the driver.’ ” Director General v. Pence’s Adm’x, 135 Va. 329, 116 S. E. 351, 356; Morgan’s Adm’r v. A. C. L. R. Co., 136 Va. 394, 118 S. E. 233; Virginian Ry. Co. v. Farr, 147 Va. 217, 136 S. E. 668; Boyd v. Mahone, 142 Va. 690, 128 S. E. 259; Norfolk & P. Belt Line R. Co. v. Parker, 152 Va. 484, 147 S. E. 461.

The case in judgment is an ordinary one in which a man takes a woman to call on some mutual friend. Opal [513]*513Grant was in no sense Miss Campbell’s agent, and so the doctrine of “joint enterprise” cannot be applied, and it is not made a joint venture because witnesses so define it.

Has defendant’s negligence been shown and did it contribute to the accident?

An ordinance of the town of Harrisonburg makes it unlawful, in a residential district, to drive over twenty-five miles an hour; it makes it unlawful to drive to the left of the center of any street, and unlawful to make a left turn without passing to the left of the center of an intersection, whether marked or not, subject to certain exceptions irrelevant here.

Between one and two o’clock on the afternoon of October 5, 1930, Gaines, who lived in Dayton, started to Harrison-burg, on baseball bent. “The world series was going on and I went to look at the scoreboard.” Naturally he wanted to be on time.

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166 S.E. 704, 159 Va. 504, 1932 Va. LEXIS 213, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/gaines-v-campbell-va-1932.