Sears v. Frost's Adm'r

279 S.W.2d 776, 1955 Ky. LEXIS 539
CourtCourt of Appeals of Kentucky
DecidedMarch 11, 1955
StatusPublished
Cited by3 cases

This text of 279 S.W.2d 776 (Sears v. Frost's Adm'r) 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
Sears v. Frost's Adm'r, 279 S.W.2d 776, 1955 Ky. LEXIS 539 (Ky. Ct. App. 1955).

Opinion

STANLEY, Commissioner.

The appeal is from a judgment for $25,-000 damages for the death of Jesse L. Frost, nicknamed “Jack”, caused by being struck by a truck belonging to the appel[778]*778lants, Marlow Sears and others, partners doing business as Marlow Sears and Sons Lumber Company.

The accident' occurred on state highway No. 151 near its junction with U. S. highway No. 60 on the afternoon of July 15, 1952. Frost, traveling northwardly, had a puncture in the left rear tire of his car. He stopped it with the right wheels over as far as possible on the shoulder of the road. This left about half its width on the pavement. About fifteen feet of paving remained clear for traffic. The- road was straight in each direction for several hundred feet. Just about the time Frost and his companion, Robert Taylor, got out to change the wheel or tire, a state patrol car came along and stopped. An officer, Sergeant Pyles, told them they were in a “pretty dangerous place; the road is slippery.” But said he, “They didn’t seem to think they could get off the road without ruining their tire and tube, so I told them I would go down the road and come back and assist them and for one of them to go down the road and' flag the traffic.” Taylor went back about thirty feet. He saw the defendants’ truck coming in the same direction, about 300 feet away. He waved it to slow down, and the truck did so. Taylor saw that-the way was clear of traffic and motioned the driver to go on. He had to jump off the road out of the way of the truck. At that time Frost was directly behind his car engaged in jacking up the bumper, with his back toward the oncoming truck. It seems he was in a stooping or bending over position. He had not yet loosened the tire or wheel bolts. The truck driver ran -on and struck Frost and the automobile. The man’s back was badly mangled, and he. died several hours later. He and his car were hit by the right front part of the truck as it was trying to clear them and pass on the left side.

Officer Pyles returned and arrived at the scene right away. He also testified that Frost was directly behind his car. The defendants’ driver, Lloyd Dyer, told the officer that when Taylor flagged him, he was prepared to stop, but when Taylor signaled him to go on, he had cut his wheels to the left, but they did not “seem to take hold right” and he “could not avoid” striking the car.

Dyer’s evidence on the trial is summarized: He was driving at 40 mph as he passed the police car and when he first saw the Frost car in front of him 100 or 150 feet away with Frost trying to put a jack under the bumper. (In a pretrial. deposition, he placed the distance at “around 100 yards.”) Taylor, who was about five feet from the car, stuck out his hand, and so he, Dyer, slowed down to five or ten mph; then Taylor, who was about 30 feet from him, jumped up on the bank. Taylor “looked around and motioned me on through. He hollowed, 'Look out for Jack.’” Dyer cut his wheels to the left; put the car into second gear; and “give it the gas to come out, and it was a-scooting toward the car. I hit my brakes but they didn’t help the matter any and before I could ever get time to do anything about it, I was done into the car where it was too late to do anything.” The truck had tandem or dual rear axles and wheels and was loaded with lumber.

The defendants showed that some 300 feet farther north on the same side of the road there was a place where the automobile might have gone and parked, and a graveled space almost directly across the road from where it did stop which was wide enough for the car to have been parked clear of the pavement. But the plaintiff’s evidence is that this was not a suitable place to repair a left tire on the north bound car. As Frost and Taylor were from Tennessee, it is likely they did not know about the place farther on. At any rate, Frost had the approval of the highway patrolman to stay where he was.

I

We cannot accede to the appellants’ argument that by stopping his car where he did and getting behind it the deceased as a matter of law assumed the risk of being hurt as that term is used in the sense of being contributorily negligent. See Mor[779]*779rison & Conklin Construction Co., v. Cooper, Ky., 256 S.W.2d SOS.

The statutes deny a motorist the right to stop or leave his car “upon the main traveled portion of a highway” unless the “vehicle * * * has been disabled” while on it “in such a manner and to such extent that it is impossible to avoid” doing so “or impracticable to remove it from the highway until repairs have been made”. KRS 189.-450. It is true the statute has been construed as not giving an absolute right to leave in such a place a car- which has sustained only a minor damage that does not interfere with its ready removal. Thus, in Burnett v. Yurt, Ky., 247 S.W.2d 227, the motorist was held to be negligent in leaving his car on the pavement when it was in good running order and only had a fender dented. But in that case and others we have held it to be a question for the jury when a stationary car in such a place was run into. Among other recent cases so holding are American Fidelity and Casualty Co. v. Patterson, Ky., 243 S.W.2d 472; Ashton v. Roop, Ky., 244 S.W.2d 727; Banner Transfer Co. v. Morse, Ky., 274 S.W.2d 380.

Of special application is Sweeney v. Schadler, Ky., 259 S.W.2d 680, 682, where a man, while wiping off the rear window of his automobile, which he had stopped partially on the highway, was struck by an overtaking car. We observed in the opinion that the position of the car was not the cause of the accident, but that the real question was whether the injured man was contributorily negligent in failing to exercise ordinary care for his own personal safety as a person on foot on the highway. Quoting and citing authorities, almost uniform, we held “that it is not contributory negligence as a matter of law for a motorist to stand upon the paved portion of the highway while engaged in making adjustments or repairs to his automobile, but that the question of his contributory negligence ordinarily is for the jury.”

Even where one is a trespasser on private property and is seen in a place of danger, he is entitled to protection from wilful injury by the owner. That is a plain humanitarian or compassionate principle of justice. In the present case, the-driver of the defendants’ truck admitted, having seen the man behind his car as he approached it and was being flagged down. It was- for the jury to determine whether the deceased was negligent in being where he was on the road.

Nor can it be said that the defendants were excusable as a matter of law because the truck skidded or struck the automobile because of the slippery condition of the road.. To relieve one of legal responsibility for this cause, it must have been the sole cause or the collision was unavoidable even though the driver was at the time exercising ordinary care and had his car under reasonable control. See Atlantic Greyhound Corp. v. Franklin, 301 Ky. 867,

Related

Tharp v. Commonwealth
40 S.W.3d 356 (Kentucky Supreme Court, 2000)
Farrington Motors, Inc. v. Fidelity & Casualty Co. of New York
303 S.W.2d 319 (Court of Appeals of Kentucky (pre-1976), 1957)

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279 S.W.2d 776, 1955 Ky. LEXIS 539, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/sears-v-frosts-admr-kyctapp-1955.