Horst Ex Rel. Horst v. Holtzen

90 N.W.2d 41, 249 Iowa 958, 1958 Iowa Sup. LEXIS 473
CourtSupreme Court of Iowa
DecidedMay 6, 1958
Docket49419
StatusPublished
Cited by26 cases

This text of 90 N.W.2d 41 (Horst Ex Rel. Horst v. Holtzen) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Iowa primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Horst Ex Rel. Horst v. Holtzen, 90 N.W.2d 41, 249 Iowa 958, 1958 Iowa Sup. LEXIS 473 (iowa 1958).

Opinion

ThompsoN, J.

The case before us presents three questions for decision. Two of them are matters of the first impression in Iowa, and are difficult and important. In order that they may be understood the facts of record and the procedures had in the trial court must be stated. So far as they concern the first two points, the facts were stipulated.

On May 18, 1955, a group of ladies, residing in Sioux City, planned to attend a meeting of a church sewing circle in Jefferson, South Dakota. The defendant had agreed to furnish transportation for at least the first stage of the journey. Mrs. A. W. Horst, the mother of Susan Horst, telephoned the defendant and asked her for a ride for herself and her mother. Susan Horst was at the time thirteen days old. The defendant agreed to pick up Mrs. Horst and her mother, and did so, at about 1:30 p.m. Mrs. Horst brought Susan with her, holding her in her lap. She also brought her young son, Stephen. Mrs. Horst and Susan were in the front seat, on the right-hand side, with her mother and Stephen and another woman, Mrs. Duke, whom the defendant was also transporting, in the back. We shall hereinafter refer to Susan as the plaintiff, although the action is brought by her father as next friend.

With this seating arrangement, the defendant stopped her automobile on the west side of a street known in the record as Grandview, headed south on a downhill slope. Apparently the brake was set; at least the car remained stationary, about a ear’s width from the west curb, with the motor running. An elderly lady, Mrs. Davis, who was also to make the trip, lived on the east side of Grandview opposite the point where the car stopped. The defendant got out of the car and went to assist Mrs. Davis across the street and into the ear. Mrs. Davis got in through the left front door and under the wheel; as she did so, or immediately afterward and before the defendant had entered the car it *961 started, caromed off a parked car, ran down the hill and into a schoolhouse. The plaintiff was severely injured.

Plaintiff’s suit having been brought and the matter being at issue, plaintiff made her application for an adjudication of law points, under rule 105, R.C.P. The requested points to be adjudicated were these:

“1. Can a month-old infant be a passenger or a guest within the provisions of section 321.494 of the Code of Iowa?
“2. Can a person in charge of an automobile be the operator of it within the provisions of section 321.494 of the Code when such person is absent from the automobile?”

It is evident that if either or both of the foregoing questions should be answered in the negative section 321.494 (the Iowa guest statute) would not apply, and the burden upon plaintiff to prove her case would be that of showing negligence only. But if both points were determined in the affirmative plaintiff would be put to the necessity of showing recklessness. One count of her petition claimed upon specific negligences; one upon res ipsa loquitur (likewise depending upon negligence); and one alleged recklessness. The trial court, through Judge Ralph C. Prichard, adjudicated both law points submitted to it by holding that the plaintiff was a guest and the defendant was the driver and operator of the ear, both within the meaning of section 321.494, supra. This left plaintiff only her recklessness count upon which to rely; and, the case coming on for trial upon this issue, before Judge R. W. Crary, a verdict was directed for the defendant at the close of plaintiff’s evidence; the court thereby holding that no jury question had been engendered upon the question of recklessness.

I. The errors assigned raise the questions suggested by the application for adjudication of law points set out above, and a third one as to the correctness of the trial court’s ruling that recklessness was not shown, as a matter of law. We shall first determine whether a small child, in this case an infant thirteen days of age, when riding with and in the care of its mother and by her consent, is a guest within the meaning of section 321.494. Since we think the exact wording of this statute is important, we set it out.

*962 “321.494. Guest statute. The owner or operator of a motor vehicle shall not be liable for any damages to any passenger or person riding in said motor vehicle as a guest or by invitation and not for hire unless damage is caused as a result of the driver of said motor vehicle being under the influence of intoxicating liquor or because of the reckless operation by him of such motor vehicle.”

The purpose for which this statute was enacted is also material. We have given consideration to this thought in Bookhart v. Greenlease-Lied Motor Co., 215 Iowa 8, 11, 244 N.W. 721, 722, 82 A. L. R. 1359, 1362, where we quoted with approval from Crawford v. Foster, 110 Cal. App. 81, 87, 293 P. 841, 843: “# *. As the use of automobiles became almost universal, the proverbial ingratitude of the dog that bites the hand that feeds him, found a counterpart in the many cases that arose, where generous drivers, having offered rides to guests, later found themselves defendants in cases that often turned upon close questions of negligence. Undoubtedly, the legislature, in adopting this act, reflected a certain natural feeling as to the injustice of such a situation. * *

There is a considerable volume of authority upon the question of a minor of tender years qualifying as a guest under the statutes which have been adopted generally in the various states. Some of them require in effect an invitation and an acceptance, as for example California and Nebraska. It is argued by the appellant here that being a guest implies an invitation, express or implied, and an acceptance; and that a thirteen-day-old infant is incapable of accepting, and so cannot be a guest. Except for dicta found in a few cases, there are none which hold flatly that such a child may not under some circumstances be a guest. Other cases, relied upon by the defendant-appellee, say that the acceptance may be by the parent or other person having legal custody and care of the infant. The cases cited by the plaintiff are, without exception, those in which a child was taken into an automobile, absent its natural guardians or any consent or approval from them, or, as in Hart v. Hogan, 173 Wash. 598, 24 P.2d 99, in which the accompanying parent was herself not a guest. There is, in fact, in the latter case an intimation that the child’s status follows that of the parent. Likewise in Kudrna *963 v. Adamski, 188 Ore. 396, 216 P.2d 262, 16 A. L. R.2d 1297, from which the plaintiff quotes, the driver of the car was not its owner, bnt was operating it at the request of the father and mother of the injured infant because the father, who was the actual owner, was not able to make the trip. There is dictum which supports plaintiff’s position; but the case has been distinguished and an opposite result reached in the later case of Welker v. Sorenson, 209 Ore. 402, 405, 306 P.2d 737, 738.

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90 N.W.2d 41, 249 Iowa 958, 1958 Iowa Sup. LEXIS 473, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/horst-ex-rel-horst-v-holtzen-iowa-1958.