Lewis v. Travelers Ins. Co.

55 So. 2d 79, 1951 La. App. LEXIS 895
CourtLouisiana Court of Appeal
DecidedNovember 15, 1951
DocketNo. 3456
StatusPublished
Cited by3 cases

This text of 55 So. 2d 79 (Lewis v. Travelers Ins. Co.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Louisiana Court of Appeal primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Lewis v. Travelers Ins. Co., 55 So. 2d 79, 1951 La. App. LEXIS 895 (La. Ct. App. 1951).

Opinion

ELLIS, Judge.

On September 29th, 1949 at approximately 9:00 A.M. the plaintiff, Eddie Lewis, was driving a panel bodied Chevrolet truck owned by his employer eastwardly on Myrtle Street, also known as Railroad Avenue, in the City of Baton Rouge, and was accompanied by a co-employer, Luvilla Haynes Vaughn, when the truck in which they were riding collided with an automobile being driven southward on South Eleventh Street by the defendant, Edward V. Coull.

The plaintiff filed suit against defendant Coull and his liability insurer, Travelers Insurance Company. The Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company, the compensation insurance carrier, intervened asking for judgment for the amount it had expended as compensation to the plaintiff. The co-employer, Luvilla Haynes Vaughn, also filed suit.

Judgment was rendered in favor of the plaintiffs Eddie T. Lewis and Luvilla Haynes Vaughn, and the intervenor, Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company, however, the claim of Luvilla Haynes Vaughn was settled after judgment and no appeal taken. From the judgment in favor of plaintiff Eddie Lewis the defendants have prosecuted this appeal “predicated on the clear showing of contributory negligence on the part of the plaintiff-driver Eddie T. Lewis.” We are only concerned with this one question.

Railroad Avenue is a through street, designated as such by an ordinance of the City of Baton Rouge, and runs east and west with railroad tracks running down the approximate center of the street. It is forty feet in width from curb to curb with sidewalks and shoulders on each side. South Eleventh Street is an inferior street running north and south and 24' 2V in width, and at the time of the collision there were no stop signs at its entrance into Railroad Avenue, however, these signs were placed there subsequent to this accident and are shown in the photographs filed in evidence.

[80]*80The District Court found that both vehicles were proceeding at approximately the same speed prior to the accident of twenty to twenty-five miles per hour, and that the front end of the car driven by the defendant Coull struck the left rear fender of the panel bodied truck at approximately the center of South Eleventh Street and just south of the railroad track on Railroad Avenue, ‘‘causing the driver of the truck to lose control of it so that it went first in a southeasterly direction and hit the curb at the southeast corner of the intersection and then changed its direction, turned over, and went northeastwardly ending up some 80 feet from the intersection on the north side of Railroad Avenue.” The Lower Court further found that the plaintiff, just prior to the collision, speeded up in an effort to avoid it, and that the defendant Coull applied his 'brakes to avoid the collision. “The result was that the Plymouth struck the rear left fender of the truck a light blow.” The Lower Court further had this to say on the question of the • contributory negligence of the plaintiff :

“ * * * The law is well founded that a person approaching the intersection on a right of way street has a right to assume that traffic approaching it from an inferior street will yield the right of way to him. See Van Dyke v. Waguespack, La.App., 198 So. 425; Boykin v. Plauche, La.App., 168 So. 741, 169 So. 131; Anderson v. Louisiana Power and Light Company, La.App., 180 So. 243. The only exception to this rule is where the action of the driver approaching on an inferior street is such that it would cause a reasonably prudent person to have reason to believe that he was not going to stop because of his speed or some other action, but here it is shown that the defendant approached the intersection at a reasonable rate of speed. Furthermore, due to the trees at the intersection, at the northwest corner, it was not possible for Lewis to see the car approaching the intersection until just before defendant entered it.”
“The court is therefore of the opinion that the defendants have failed to prove that there was any negligence on the part of Lewis which was the proximate cause of this accident.”

While there are witnesses, apparently disinterested, who have testified that both cars were traveling at approximately the same speed of 15 to 20 miles per hour and arrived at the intersection at approximately the same time, this cannot be true for it is positively shown by the record that Railroad Avenue is 40 feet in width and that the point of impact was 2 feet south of and in the plaintiff’s lane of traffic. By a sketch introduced in evidence it is shown that the defendant Coull had traveled 26 feet out in this wide, open street, and yet the plaintiff testified that he did not see the defendant until he was approximately at the intersection and he then speeded up in an effort to pass in front of the defendant’s car. The evidence further reflects that the defendant approached Railroad Avenue traveling south on South Eleventh Street at approximately 15 to 20 miles per hour; that when he was some four or five feet back from, the intersection he looked to his left and then, at about the time he reached the intersection to his right and saw the truck which plaintiff was' driving coming at a rapid rate of speed which he estimated at 35 miles per hour, a distance of 100 to 125 feet away. He realized that he could not cross safely, whereupon he applied his brakes and he positively testified that his car was stopped at the moment of impact when the front end was approximately two feet south of the railroad track. He further testified that he was traveling in his west and proper lane of traffic on South Eleventh Street, allowing a normal distance to his east for traffic to pass going in the opposite direction. The District Court found that the accident occurred about the center of the intersection. Even if we accept this finding, Eddie Lewis had not traveled quite half as far as the defendant into the intersection even though the defendant had his brakes on most of the distance. From these facts alone, it was physically impossible for the cars to have reached the intersection at the same time. There is no doubt but that the defendant [81]*81reached the intersection first and had traversed, with his brakes on, most of the way or well over half of the intersection at the time of the collision. The plaintiff must have been traveling approximately twice as fast as the defendant. Another fact or circumstance which proves the excessive speed of the plaintiff is the fact that after the impact he continued in a southeasterly direction, struck the south curb, the truck turned over on its top, reversed its direction insofar as the front and rear ends were concerned, skidded on its top across this 40 foot street, righted itself upon its wheels and came to rest a distance of 80 feet from the point of collision. While it is shown that this truck had a governor that allowed it to travel 38 miles per hour, we are of the opinion that it was making the full 38 miles at the time of the collision.

As to the defendant being stopped at the time of the collision, we believe that he was completely stopped. He testified that the plaintiff veered his car to the southeast after speeding up in an attempt to get across the intersection in front of the defendant; that he sat in his car and saw the rear end of the truck strike the front of his hood, denting it in as shown by the photographs, and also striking the bumper guard on the left side breaking it off and pushing it toward the left. The blow was a light one and did not move the defendant’s car one inch.

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Bluebook (online)
55 So. 2d 79, 1951 La. App. LEXIS 895, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/lewis-v-travelers-ins-co-lactapp-1951.