M. & D. Motor Freight Lines v. Kelley

1948 OK 128, 202 P.2d 215, 201 Okla. 121, 1948 Okla. LEXIS 541
CourtSupreme Court of Oklahoma
DecidedMay 25, 1948
DocketNo. 32363
StatusPublished
Cited by7 cases

This text of 1948 OK 128 (M. & D. Motor Freight Lines v. Kelley) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Oklahoma primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
M. & D. Motor Freight Lines v. Kelley, 1948 OK 128, 202 P.2d 215, 201 Okla. 121, 1948 Okla. LEXIS 541 (Okla. 1948).

Opinion

DAVISON, V.C.J.

This is an action wherein plaintiff seeks recovery for personal injuries received as the result of alleged negligence. There is little dispute about the facts. The parties will be referred to as they appeared in the trial court.

The yard and office of the defendant ■Antrim Lumber Company was located in the city of Marlow on the south side of Main street. Immediately west of it was the high school; immediately east in the next block was the post office. The lumber yard fence was parallel with, and some two or three feet from, the sidewalk. There was a sliding gate in the fence hung on overhead rollers, said gate being 14 feet wide. The driveway, entering this gate, was of concrete, sloping slightly down from the sidewalk. About even with the east end of the gate, and midway between sidewalk and fence, was an iron stob about one foot high for preventing the swinging of the gate. In the center of the driveway just inside the gate was a concrete marker about one foot by two feet with a beveled top, five inches high, on each side of which was painted the word “slow” as a caution to vehicles entering and leaving defendant’s lumber yard.

On the morning in question a large tractor-trailer truck belonging to the defendant M. & D. Motor Freight Lines, with a shipment of shingles consigned to the lumber company, was backed up to within two feet of the gate which it could not enter because of a cross bar, above the driveway slightly lower than the top of the truck. There was a variance in the testimony as to whether or not the back, of the truck was completely across the sidewalk. The front of the truck was out in the street.

About 8 o’clock that morning, plaintiff, a 17-year-old student, arrived at the school building • on the school bus. She walked past the lumber ..company to the post office before the truck arrived. As she returned to school a few minutes later, the truck was there being unloaded by the driver, and an employee of the lumber company. Plaintiff started to go behind the truck, tripped on the iron stob; twisted her ankle on the driveway slope; then fell across the concrete “slow” sign. She was taken to a hospital where she remained 41 days, undergoing two major operations for injuries to her stomach as a result of the fall.

Plaintiff sued the lumber company, the trucking company and the surety on the latter’s statutory bond, for damages for pain and suffering, absence from school, and hospital and medical care. The jury returned a verdict in her favor against both principal defendants in the amount of $3,000. From the judgment rendered thereon, this appeal has been perfected.

The first and primary question raised by both principal defendants is as to the sufficiency of the evidence of plaintiff. They rely upon the rule stated in Patrick v. Oklahoma City, 170 Okla. 545, 41 P. 2d 103:

“Negligence of the defendant to be actionable must be the proximate cause of the injury, and, unless it is reasonably apparent that the injury suffered by the plaintiff is the causal effect from the wrongful act of the defendants, a demurrer to plaintiff’s evidence should be sustained.”

In that case we reaffirmed our reasoning in Schaff v. Edwards, 111 Okla. 13, 237 P. 620, quoting therefrom as follows:

“. . . ‘The burden was on the plaintiff to show that the act of the defendant in leaving the coal car at the place where it stood was the reasonable and probable cause of the collision; that the result was such that a reasonable and prudent man might have anticipated the consequences. The burden rested on the plaintiff to show that his injury was the causal effect of some act of the defendant, which the latter could have foreseen by the exercise of or[123]*123dinary prudence and care for the safety of. those who traveled over the highway’.”

However, the proof in the Patrick case is not the same as here. Therein, the plaintiff, going west on the north side of Tenth street in Oklahoma City, intended to turn south on the east side of Kelly street, but the defendant company had placed sewer pipe across the walk. She crossed the parking to get to the street, and in so doing, stepped on the metal covering of a storm sewer, which tipped and cause her to fall and injure herself. She sued the company and the city, and appealed from the order sustaining demurrers to her evidence. There was no testimony whatever 'of any defects in the sewer covering or that, if there were, either de- . fendant knew of, or should have known of them.

Therein we followed the rule applicable in Lakey v. North McAlester Coal Co., 98 Okla. 130, 224 P. 309, that the happening of the accident is no evidence of negligence of the defendants. But herein the testimony goes much further. The present situation is quite similar to that in the Washington case of Larsen v. City of Sedro-Woolley, 49 Wash. 134, 94 P. 938, wherein plaintiff had been forced, because of obstructions on the sidewalk, to walk in the parkway between piles of lumber, where she tripped over a piece of the lumber protruding from one of the piles. In the Patrick case, the Larsen case was discussed, and distinguished therefrom, as follows:

“. . . In that case, the plaintiff by reason of obstructions on the walk had been forced to walk off the sidewalk, and along the parkway between piles of lumber, and fell over a piece of lumber extending from one of the piles into the path she was forced to follow. In such case, the path she was forced to follow was obstructed and rendered dangerous by the acts of the defendants.”

Here the plaintiff, in walking behind the truck, tripped on the iron stob and fell on the concrete marker. It is true she could have gone out to the middle of the street and around the front of the truck, or could have followed an entirely different route to the school. But that is not the yardstick for measuring negligence. There is a duty on the part of one blocking a sidewalk to use ordinary care in protecting the public by not causing them to travel an unsafe way unwarned. The driver of the truck testified that he left a two foot space between the truck and the gate for the school children to travel and that several of them had gone through this passageway before plaintiff came along. He further testified that he backed the truck close to the gate at the suggestion of the manager of the lumber company.

The employee of the trucking company and the employee of the lumber company were unloading shingles from the truck, and by backing it across the sidewalk and up to within two feet of the gate, instead of at the curb parallel with the street, they saved walking an additional eight or ten feet. It was for their own convenience that the public •was deprived of the use of the sidewalk, and forced to go another route. They had a right to temporarily and reasonably obstruct the sidewalk for the purpose of unloading, and in doing so, they did not create a nuisance; but this did not relieve them from the results of their negligence. If the sidewalk had been entirely blocked a different situation would have been presented. But, here, they left a two foot opening as a passageway for the purpose of permitting pedestrians to use same, and with actual knowledge that said way was being so used. They extended an implied invitation to pedestrians to travel this route. By doing so they became duty bound to see that the path, so selected, was hazard free, or to warn persons using it of its dangers.

Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI

Related

Osborne v. Mollman Water Conditioning, Inc.
2003 OK CIV APP 20 (Court of Civil Appeals of Oklahoma, 2002)
West v. State
2000 OK CIV APP 110 (Court of Civil Appeals of Oklahoma, 2000)
In Re ADW
2000 OK CIV APP 110 (Court of Civil Appeals of Oklahoma, 2000)
Thompson v. Presbyterian Hospital, Inc.
652 P.2d 260 (Supreme Court of Oklahoma, 1982)
Safeway Stores, Incorporated v. Musfelt
1960 OK 34 (Supreme Court of Oklahoma, 1960)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
1948 OK 128, 202 P.2d 215, 201 Okla. 121, 1948 Okla. LEXIS 541, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/m-d-motor-freight-lines-v-kelley-okla-1948.