Henrickson v. Resnik

390 S.W.2d 610, 1965 Mo. App. LEXIS 649
Missouri Court of Appeals·Decided May 5, 1965·No. 8382·Published·Cited by 6 cases

Opinion

HOGAN, Judge.

This case arose out of a collision between automobiles driven by the plaintiff and defendant at the intersection of Ninth and Maude Streets in Poplar Bluff, Missouri. Plaintiff’s husband, Dr. H. M. Henrickson, who was riding with her as a passenger, was killed, and the plaintiff and defendant both sustained certain personal injuries.

Plaintiff charged the defendant with numerous acts of primary negligence, but submitted both her claim for the wrongful death of her husband and her own claim for personal injuries in a single instruction predicated upon the defendant’s humanitarian negligence in failing to slacken the speed of his vehicle and swerve to the right. The defendant, who filed an affirmative counterclaim, submitted his case upon the plaintiff’s primary negligence in entering the intersection when the defendant was approaching so closely as to constitute an immediate hazard of collision, and upon plaintiff’s humanitarian negligence in failing to stop. The jury found against the plaintiff both on her claim for wrongful death and for personal injuries, and found affirmatively for the defendant upon his counterclaim, assessing his damages in the sum of $5,000.00. The plaintiff has appealed.

In order to deal appropriately with the parties’ contentions, it is necessary to state the evidence introduced tending to support the conflicting factual versions of the manner in which the collision was brought about.

Ninth Street runs north and south, and Maude Street runs east and west. Both are paved, concrete streets, and they intersect approximately at right angle's. At the west entrance to the intersection, Maude Street runs slightly upgrade and is 26 feet 3 inches wide from curb to curb; it is slightly wider at the east entrance. There is a stop sign on Maude for eastbound traffic 2 feet 1 inch west of the southwest corner of the intersection. On the northwest corner of the intersection,' there is a brick building, then known as Piggie Hogg’s Market, the south property line of which is 7 feet 2 inches north of the north curb line of Maude. On the west side of Ninth Street, north of the intersection, there is a parking lane or strip some five feet wide along the west curb “in front of” Piggie Hogg’s, so that Ninth Street is 26 feet 8 inches from curb to curb on the north side of the intersection but only 21 feet 3 inches from curb to curb at the south entrance. There was no stop sign for traffic southbound on Ninth.

As the plaintiff related the accident, she was driving east on Maude, about 4:25 P.M. on Saturday, January 5, 1963, taking her husband to his work at the Poplar Bluff Hospital. Plaintiff was driving and her husband, a physician, was seated in front with her. As-she came to the intersection, Mrs. Henrickson stopped about two feet west of the stop sign, and looked first to her right, and then to her left. At the time, there was a car parked along the west curb of Ninth Street, and Mrs. Henrickson’s view to the left (north) was obstructed by the parked vehicle, and to some degree by *613 the building, but she estimated that she coúld then see 40 to 50 feet to her left. Plaintiff then “eased in” to look further, and again made an observation of traffic when the front end of her automobile was clear of the parked automobile and some two feet out into the intersection. At the time she made her second observation, plaintiff estimated that she could see 100 to 125 feet in either direction, north or south, and estimated her forward speed to be two to four miles an hour.

Perceiving no oncoming traffic in either direction, plaintiff then proceeded into the intersection, increasing her speed to five or six miles an hour. As she reached a point where the front end of her vehicle, a four-door 1962 Cadillac, was about four feet east of the east curb line of Ninth Street, her automobile was struck behind the left front door by the defendant’s vehicle and pushed south against a telephone pole. Dr. Henrickson was thrown from the vehicle and was killed, and the plaintiff sustained personal injuries.

The plaintiff also had the testimony of two eyewitnesses, the first a Mr. Everett Mitchell, who had been standing nearby when the accident occurred, and a Mr. O. C. Cutsinger, who had seen the casualty from a sunroom in his house on the southwest side of the intersection. Mr. Mitchell had been standing on the east side of Ninth Street preparing to enter the market, and when he had started west across Ninth Street he saw the defendant’s southbound vehicle, which “honked [its] horn at me.” Mr. Mitchell stopped and observed the plaintiff’s automobile “easing out” into the intersection, “and the Cadillac [plaintiff’s vehicle] pulled out in front of him [defendant], and it hit it, hit the Cadillac in the side.” By means of reference points on a photographic exhibit showing the intersection from the north on Ninth Street, Mr. Mitchell estimated that the defendant’s vehicle was 91 feet north of the intersection when the plaintiff’s vehicle started up. This witness estimated that the front end of the plaintiff’s vehicle was about even with the east curb line of Ninth Street when the collision occurred. It was his recollection that there were “two or three cars” parked along the west curb of Ninth Street at the entrance to the market.

Mr, Cutsinger, who was sitting in his sunroom at the time the accident occurred, testified that he had first seen the plaintiff stop at the stop sign and then had seen her look both to the south and to the north on Ninth. Mr. Cutsinger had seen the plaintiff proceed into the intersection and then had seen the defendant’s automobile proceeding south on Ninth Street. At the time when the front end of the Cadillac was “about the center of the intersection,” the defendant’s vehicle had been 83 feet north of the intersection; and as the front end of the Cadillac came to a point some two to four feet east of the east curb line of Ninth Street, the defendant’s vehicle struck the plaintiff’s “about the back door of her car.” It was Mr. Cutsinger’s testimony that the defendant’s vehicle was being driven on the east or left side of Ninth Street, and that he had not slackened his speed at any time before the collision. As Mr. Cutsinger recalled, there had been one automobile parked along the west curb line of Ninth Street, probably four or five feet north of the north curb line of Maude.

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Henrickson v. Resnik, 390 S.W.2d 610, 1965 Mo. App. LEXIS 649 (Mo. Ct. App. 1965).

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