Koplovitz v. Jensen

151 N.E. 390, 197 Ind. 475, 1926 Ind. LEXIS 45
CourtIndiana Supreme Court
DecidedApril 2, 1926
DocketNo. 24,193.
StatusPublished
Cited by31 cases

This text of 151 N.E. 390 (Koplovitz v. Jensen) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Indiana Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Koplovitz v. Jensen, 151 N.E. 390, 197 Ind. 475, 1926 Ind. LEXIS 45 (Ind. 1926).

Opinion

Myers, J.

Appellee brought this action against appellant to recover damages on account of injuries to his automobile resulting from a collision with appellant’s truck alleged to have been caused by appellant’s alleged failure and neglect to display a red light on the rear of his truck. A complaint in one paragraph answered by a general denial, formed the issues submitted to a jury which returned a verdict in favor of appellee for $750. Judgment on the verdict.

On appeal to this court appellant has assigned as error the overruling of his motion for a new trial wherein he asserts that the verdict is contrary to law and not *478 sustained by sufficient evidence; that the court erred in its instructions to the jury, and in refusing to give- appellant’s requested instructions.

Appellee’s complaint, in substance, charges that while he was lawfully and carefully driving his automobile over and along a certain named public highway at about 11:45 p. m. of a certain day, and more than one-half hour after sunset and more than one-half hour before sunrise of the following day, appellant, the owner of an automobile truck, then and there operating it upon the same highway in the direction in which appellee was driving, did then and there negligently, carelessly and unlawfully fail to display on the rear of such truck a red light or any light whatsoever visible from the rear thereof, by reason whereof, and solely because of such careless, negligent and unlawful conduct of appellant, and without any fault or negligence on the part of appellee, the automobile collided with appellant’s truck then and there by him permitted to stand on the highway mentioned, whereby the injury, of which complaint is made, resulted, and for which $1,000 is demanded.

The record at bar affirmatively shows that appellee relied, and the case was tried upon the theory that at the time of the alleged collision a statute of this state required that all motor vehicles operated or driven upon any public highway of this state must be equipped with a visible red light on the rear thereof, and that a violation of this provision constituted negligence.

While appellant in his brief refers to §13; Acts 1913 p. 779 as the section of the act relied on by appellee, yet we are inclined to believe from the record before us that §13 as amended by the legislature in 1919 was intended. Acts 1919 p. 700. While the latter enactment did not expressly repeal §13, it re-enacted it in toto with a proviso added, and hence the original section was repealed by implication. The amended section was therefore in *479 force when, the accident and injury occurred for which appellee seeks redress.

Appellant first insists that the provision of the statute, that, “Every motor vehicle or motor bicycle operated or driven upon any public highway in this state * * * shall, during the period from one-half (i/á) hour after sunset to one-half (I/2) hour before sunrise, display at least two (2) lighted lamps on the front and one (1) on the rear of such motor vehicle, which shall display a red light visible from the - rear,” must be construed as a regulation of such vehicles only when the same are in motion. In support of this contention he refers us to the evidence which conclusively shows that the injury to appellee’s automobile was the result of a collision with appellant’s truck while it was at rest.

On this point, it may be well that we refer to the evidence, which, in substance, shows that appellant at the time of the alleged accident resided and was engaged- in the fruit business at Gary, Indiana. He was the owner of a two-ton capacity stake body truck in which, with a driver, he left Gary at about ten o’clock at night, and while on the Ridge road between Gary and Highland he stopped the- truck, alighted, walked across the road to a farm house about two or three rods away, and while there talking to some one, appellee, driving a Chalmers touring car at a speed of twenty miles an hour in the same direction- that the truck was headed, collided with the left rear corner of the truck body, breaking the windshield, tearing off the top and a portion of the right-hand side of the body of the automobile, and otherwise damaging it. The truck, immediately preceding the accident, had been standing on the right hand portion of the traveled highway from five to ten minutes with no rear lights of any kind on it, and with the driver in the cab. After the accident the truck proceeded on its way.

*480 Appellant cites City of Harlan v. Kraschel (1914), 164 Iowa 667, 146 N. W. 463, and Musgrave v. Studebaker Bros. Co. (1916), 48 Utah 410, 160 Pac. 117. The question involved in the City of Harlan case was the construction of a city ordinance substantially in the language of §18 of an Act of the thirty-fourth General Assembly of Iowa, requiring all motor vehicles operated or driven after dark to display two lighted lamps in front and one in the rear, the latter a red light visible from the rear. The court, in considering the words “operated or driven” along with the context of §18, reached the conclusion that these words in the ordinance and statute (which statute was not materially different in its legal effect from ours) should be given a literal sense construction, and hence a standing car, although stopped temporarily, is not one being operated or driven within the strict terms and meaning of those words. The court also observed that public safety would be to some extent promoted by the requirement that all standing vehicles in public streets should display lights at night, but “there is no apparent reason for any distinction between one vehicle and another of equal capacity for obstruction.”

The Iowa General Assembly at its thirty-eighth session (§§5044 and 5045 of the Code of 1924) amended the above enactment passed at its thirty-fourth- session so as to provide that lights be displayed on “all motor vehicles ‘in use’ on the public highways.” The words “in use” were before the court in the case of Griffin v. McNeil (1924), 198 Iowa 1359, 201 N. W. 78, wherein damages were sought for an injury to an automobile resulting from a collision with another automobile parked on the side of a street with the lights, both front and rear, turned off. It was held that the change in the statute from “operated or driven” to the words “in use” did not in any material sense alter the meaning of *481 the statute and therefore an automobile was not “in use” when standing by the curb of a public street where it had been left by the driver for a temporary purpose.

The Musgrave case was an action to recover damages for personal injuries. It appears that while defendant was engaged in moving two automobiles, tandem, connected with each other by a rope and likewise to a third which furnished the motive power for transferring them from the freight station to a garage, a half mile distant, thé complainant, on foot, seeking to cross the street, knowingly stepped on the rope connecting the two dead cars and fell in front of the rear car, the front wheels of which passed over his limbs. There were no lights on the dead cars.

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Bluebook (online)
151 N.E. 390, 197 Ind. 475, 1926 Ind. LEXIS 45, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/koplovitz-v-jensen-ind-1926.