Lee Lewis, Inc. v. Dosch

235 S.W. 355, 193 Ky. 163, 1921 Ky. LEXIS 205
CourtCourt of Appeals of Kentucky
DecidedDecember 6, 1921
StatusPublished
Cited by4 cases

This text of 235 S.W. 355 (Lee Lewis, Inc. v. Dosch) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Kentucky primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Lee Lewis, Inc. v. Dosch, 235 S.W. 355, 193 Ky. 163, 1921 Ky. LEXIS 205 (Ky. Ct. App. 1921).

Opinion

Opinion of the Court by

Judge Sampson

Affirming..

Appellee Doscb seeks to recover damages of Lee-Lewis, Inc., for an injury wbicb was caused by .tbe collision of a large truck belonging to tbe incorporation, with tbe automobile of appellee Doscb on Oak street near the intersection of Floyd street in tbe city of Louisville in 1919. Appellee Doscb was driving westward on Oak street and tbe truck was traveling eastward on tbe same street, both approaching tbe intersection of said street [164]*164with Floyd, street. The .truck was on the proper or south side of Oak street as it approached the intersection, while the car was on the other or north side of the street. A large ¡building stands on the southwest corner of the intersection pf the two streets and obstructs the view of chauffeurs as they approach the intersection. Just as the truck was coming up- to Floyd street the chauffeur thereon suddenly discovered an .automobile traveling north at a rapid rate on Floyd street approaching said intersection. A collision appeared imminent, to avoid which the chauffeur on the truck, then in the intersection, tried to turn his car north on Floyd and thus allow the approaching automobile to turn east on Oak. The space was so short and the turn so abrupt that the truck could not make its way around the corner into Floyd. Discovering this the chauffeur on the truck allowed it to go east on Oak, but nest to the north side of the street at the curb, which was the wrong side of the street for a vehicle traveling east. The automobile which had caused the swerving of the truck had passed around the corner into Oak street and in doing so had swung out so far toward the center of the street as to cause appellee Dosch, who was just then approaching on Floyd, to pull his car nest to the curb on the north side of Oak street. Here it was struck by the truck going east and badly damaged and plaintiff Dosch also sustained injuries to his person. It is admitted that appellee Dosch was not to blame for the accident, for he was driving at a very slow rate on that side of the street, which by the law of the road he was entitled to travel.

A trial resulted in a verdict and judgment for $1,350.00 in favor of appellee Dosch. Being dissatisfied with this the appellant, Lee Lewis, Inc., brings the case here for review.

As ground for reversal of the judgment appellant urges: (1) That the trial court erred in overruling its motion for a directed verdict in its favor. (2) In refusing to allow appellant to impeach one of the witnesses for appellee. (3) In allowing the plaintiff to introduce three photographs of the alleged injured car without proper identification of the photographs. (4) The trial court erroneously instructed the jury as to the law of the case.

1. ■ As we can find no reasonable ground upon which the trial court could have peremptorily instructed the [165]*165jury to find for the defendant and as appellant points out no such ground we conclude the trial court properly overruled the motion for a directed verdict, made both at the conclusion of the evidence for the plaintiff and at the conclusion of all the evidence.

2. Appellee Doscli introduced a witness named Cohen, who testified to material facts for the plaintiff. The defendant offered to impeach this witness by showing that he had been indicted by the Federal grand jury for taking property from the Federal government and had pleaded guilty to the charge and was convicted and sentenced by the Federal court to serve a term of seven months in the Jefferson county jail. Only such offenses named in the statute as are punishable by death or confinement in the penitentiary are felonies; all others are misdemeanors. Kentucky Statutes, section 1127. A witness may be impeached by the adverse party in several different ways indicated in section 597 of the Civil Code, one of which is by showing that the witness has been convicted of a felony. A conviction of a misdemeanor cannot be shown in impeachment of a witness. Wells v. The Commonwealth, 30 R. 504. While the crime charged against Cohen in the Federal court may have been a felony he was convicted of a misdemeanor, or at least his punishment was fixed at confinement in, the county jail, and our statute specifically declares that an offense for which the punishment is less than death or confinement in a penitentiary is a misdemeanor. The trial court, therefore, properly refused to allow appellant to introduce evidence showing that Cohen had been convicted of an offense in a Federal court, the punishment of which was confinement in the county jail, as impeachment of said witness.

3. Immediately after the accident to the automobile, appellee Dosch had three photographs made of the front end of his machine, showing a hole in the radiator and in part the wrecked condition of the car. On the trial he offered these photographs in evidence. In doing so his counsel asked this question:

“I will ask you to look at these pictures and ask if those photographs are correct representations of your car immediately after the injury?”

To which the witness replied:

“Well, that is the way the front end of the machine looks, but that does not show where the motor is shoved back underneath the dashboard or all the damage where [166]*166the body is twisted and bent, all the metal out of shape, does not show that, shows a plain view of the front end of the machine, does not show the damage done -to the rest of the car.-’

It is insisted by appellant that the court should not have allowed the photographs to go to the jury until they were thoroughly identified as pictures of the car and it was proven that the photographs represented .the entire damage to the car. With this insistence we cannot agree. While the photographs must be identified and must be a fair representation of the object pictured, they are not and cannot in the nature of things be a complete representation of every detail of an injury to an automobile' as in this case. A front ocular inspection of the car after the wreck would not have disclosed to the natural eye all of the injury to the automobile. If the pictures were correct representations of the front part of the car, which they -purported to be, they were competent to go to the jury even though there were other details of the injury not shown in the pictures. Either of the pictures introduced gives to the mind a better understanding of the actual condition of the front end of the damaged automobile than any word picture given by any of the witnesses. The court did not err in allowing the jury to consider the photographs as evidence.

4.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
235 S.W. 355, 193 Ky. 163, 1921 Ky. LEXIS 205, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/lee-lewis-inc-v-dosch-kyctapp-1921.