Place v. Cummins Construction Co.

1970 OK 208, 477 P.2d 668, 1970 Okla. LEXIS 497
CourtSupreme Court of Oklahoma
DecidedNovember 10, 1970
DocketNo. 42476
StatusPublished

This text of 1970 OK 208 (Place v. Cummins Construction Co.) 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
Place v. Cummins Construction Co., 1970 OK 208, 477 P.2d 668, 1970 Okla. LEXIS 497 (Okla. 1970).

Opinion

LAVENDER, Justice:

A jury returned a verdict for the only defendant, Cummins Construction Company, a corporation, in an action by Jackie N. Place, as plaintiff, for damages arising out of personal injuries sustained by him in a two-vehicle collision. The collision occurred about noon on a clear day on an east-west bridge over a railroad on U. S. Highway 66 just west of Davenport, Oklahoma, between a 1948 “Jeep” station wagon being driven in an easterly direction by the plaintiff and a Caterpillar (brand) “DW-21 Carry-all Scraper” being driven in a westerly direction by Danny Ray Lovall, an employee of the defendant corporation, who was acting within the scope of his employment at the time.

After the overruling of his motion for a new trial and amended motion for a new trial (which alleged only two grounds), the plaintiff appealed to this court, contending (in harmony with his motions for a new trial), first, that the verdict and judgment are not sustained by the evidence, because the evidence clearly shows that the plaintiff’s injuries were solely and [670]*670proximately caused by the negligence of the defendant’s agent, Lovall, and second, that the plaintiff was materially prejudiced, and was denied a fair trial, by reason of misconduct of one of the attorneys for the defendant in informing the jury that the investigating Highway Patrol trooper’s report of the accident contained a statement that the plaintiff’s vehicle was exceeding a safe speed prior to the collision.

According to the evidence (including photographs taken at the scene of the collision before either, vehicle had been moved after colliding and coming to a stop), the defendant’s vehicle was a motorized two axle, four wheel, “rubber-tired,” front-wheel drive, bottom-loading, earth mover with a scraper for scooping material into the carrier portion of the vehicle, commonly referred to as a “uke,” 13.5 feet in height, 55 feet in length, 11 feet and ten inches in width at the widest points, and weighing 60,000 pounds, which, at the time of the collision, was traveling on that particular highway under a special permit issued by the Department of Public Safety of the State of Oklahoma. The photographs of this vehicle indicate that the driver’s seat and the steering wheel are located above, and slightly to the rear of, and about even with the outside edge of, the left front wheel. The defendant’s driver testified that, from that point, one can easily see the ground or other surface immediately in front of the left-front wheel. The photographs also indicate that the outer edges of the rear wheels are farther apart than the outer edges of the front wheels, but lack a few inches of being as far apart as the 11 feet and 10 inches that the cargo-carrying portion of the vehicle measured in width. Plaintiff’s station wagon measured five feet in width.

According to several measurements made by different witnesses who testified, the roadway surface of the bridge on which the collision occurred was exactly 24 feet wide from curb to curb.

Photographs received in evidence indicate that the approach to the bridge from the east is an incline on a sweeping curve to the right but straightens out before it gets to the east end of the bridge; that the approach to the bridge from the west is a long, straight incline with a slightly greater gradient just before reaching the west end of the bridge; and that both of the approaches had painted center-lines on the roadway thereof. The bridge had been re-surfaced and, at the time of the collision, there was no painted line or other marker on the surface of the bridge to indicate the center-line of the bridge. A short distance west of the west end of the bridge, and on the south side of the road, facing vehicles approaching from the west, was a standard road sign indicating a curve to- the left, immediately below which there was another “official” sign bearing the legend “50 MPH,” which the investigating Highway Patrol trooper referred to as a “suggested” speed limit, after testifying that the applicable statutory speed limit for passenger vehicles approaching the bridge from the west was 65 miles per hour.

The plaintiff, an automobile mechanic living at Davenport, Oklahoma, testified that: On the day of the accident, he, accompanied by his son Delbert, had driven in a Jeep station wagon to Chandler for some auto parts, got them, and started back to Davenport, but doesn’t remember anything that happened after he passed his brother-in-law’s home (which was not located), honked the horn and waived at him, until he was being taken to surgery in the hospital. When he left Davenport to go to Chandler that day, there was nothing wrong with the steering or the brakes, and the brakes were not grabbing going to or from Chandler. In his opinion, as an experienced automobile mechanic, a car’s pulling one way or the other would be caused by one brake’s being tighter than the others or by somebody’s “whipping” the car.

The plaintiff’s son, who was 14 years of age at the time of the accident, testified that: On the day of the accident, he went with his father to Chandler, leav[671]*671ing Davenport about 11 o’clock a. m. His father drove and he rode in the passenger seat on the right. There were no rear seats in the station wagon. The windshield was clear. On the return trip, as they approached the bridge from the west, he saw a big machine on the bridge and it was about four feet over the center-line, in the east-bound lane. It felt as though his father put on the brakes. The car went off on the shoulder to the right (south), and then came back on the road, and the next thing he remembers is that some one came up to the car, after the collision, and asked him how he was. On cross-examination, he stated that they were about half way up the grade to the bridge when he first saw the machine on the bridge, and, from that point, it was impossible to see the surface of the bridge. He didn’t remember then whether or not there was a painted center-line on the bridge at the time of the accident, or whether or not the brakes grabbed when their car veered to the right.

It will be noted that, if the uke were being driven on a line parallel with the north curb of the bridge, with four feet of its body projecting into or over the eastbound traffic lane, as suggested by the plaintiff’s son, there would still have been eight feet of that lane unobstructed, over which the plaintiff’s Jeep, which measured five feet in width, could have passed.

The defendant’s driver, Danny Ray Lov-all, testified that: At the time of the accident, he had had about six years of experience in operating equipment like the “uke” that he was driving that day. It had been rented from a firm in Oklahoma City, and he was returning it to Oklahoma City from a construction job near the Oklahoma-Missouri line. At the time of the trial, he had not worked for the defendant for about eight months — he had quit when he was asked to work on some jobs that would take him too far from home. On the day of the accident, he had just left Davenport, headed west, went up the curved incline toward the bridge in question, shifted into the next to lowest of five gears, and was going about 10 to 12 miles per hour as he started onto the bridge. He could see that no one was on the bridge just before he got on it, but, as he was entering the bridge, he stood up to see if any one was coming up the grade from the west, and saw no one coming.

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Related

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1964 OK 75 (Supreme Court of Oklahoma, 1964)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
1970 OK 208, 477 P.2d 668, 1970 Okla. LEXIS 497, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/place-v-cummins-construction-co-okla-1970.