Smith v. State Farm Insurance Co.

431 S.W.2d 775, 1968 Tex. App. LEXIS 3094
CourtCourt of Appeals of Texas
DecidedSeptember 5, 1968
DocketNo. 6965
StatusPublished

This text of 431 S.W.2d 775 (Smith v. State Farm Insurance Co.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Texas primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Smith v. State Farm Insurance Co., 431 S.W.2d 775, 1968 Tex. App. LEXIS 3094 (Tex. Ct. App. 1968).

Opinion

PARKER, Justice.

The surviving widow and an adult child of Ivy Smith, deceased, sued Sammie Wilson and his employer, State Farm Insurance Company, for damages as a result of the death of Ivy Smith, resulting from a pedestrian-automobile accident. Ivy Smith was the pedestrian. The automobile was driven by Sammie Wilson. The case was tried before a jury. The court instructed the verdict in favor of State Farm Insurance Company. The jury made affirmative findings of negligence on the part of both the deceased, Ivy Smith, and the defendant driver, Sammie Wilson. The trial court set aside the jury’s answers to Special Issues Nos. 6, 7, 8, and 9, but refused to disregard the jury’s answers to Special Issues Nos. 10, 11, and 12, finding that just before the collision in question, the deceased, Ivy Smith, was walking along the right hand side of the roadway in question, which was negligence and a proximate cause of the collision in question. Judgment was entered that such plaintiffs take nothing by their suit against defendants. The plaintiffs have appealed. The parties will be designated as in the trial court, plaintiffs and defendants. Plaintiffs have no point of error complaining of the take-nothing judgment against State Farm Insurance Company.

The accident occurred at 7:45 a. m. on December 4, 1967, on a public street in the middle of a block, not at an intersection of streets. It was a clear day. Sammie Wilson, the defendant, testified: He was driving a 1960 Chrysler, traveling east on a public street, at a speed of some 15 miles per hour. This street contained a black-top pavement without a center stripe. Wilson was going to pick up his mother-in-law and drive her to work. The automobile was owned by Sammie Wilson. The pedestrian, Mr. Smith, collided with his automobile. Wilson’s exact testimony is as follows:

Q. Well, all right. Your automobile did collide with Mr. Smith sometime ago last year or whenever you — you do remember that.
A. No, sir, he collided with my automobile.
Q. All right. All right. When did you first see or did you ever see the man that your car hit or that hit your car, whichever it was? You said, I believe, he hit your car. When did you first see the man?
A. To know it was a man ?
Q. Yes.
A. When he was laying on the pavement.
Q. Now, what part of your car collided with the object that you saw to be a man when he was laying on the street?
A. None.
Q. Your car didn’t ever—
A. He collided with my car.

The first time he saw Smith was after the accident, when Smith was on the pavement some four feet in front of his car, midway between the south edge of the black top and the center of the black top. When Smith came in contact with the right fender of Wilson’s car, Wilson heard a bump and a sound as of a metal object hitting his automobile. He saw something that appeared to be clothes, a jacket or something; “someone had ran into the side of my car.” After the accident, there were dents and scratches by which he could tell which part of his car had come in contact with the pedestrian, Smith. It was the right front fender near the radio antenna, not near the bumper of the car. There was one dent on top of the fender about three inches behind the front of the fender. At the time of the accident, Wilson’s car was on the black top. Upon the impact, he >ap[777]*777plied his brakes and the skid marks on the pavement showed he was 18 inches from the right side of the pavement, which was the south side.

Hobson Bodie testified: He observed the accident from about a block away. “That he did not see the pedestrian, Ivy Smith; that the first thing he saw was the accident itself in a split secondthat the pedestrian was carrying a gun; that Bodie was headed east and, at the time he observed the accident, he was about half way between Highway 96 and Fourth Street; that the accident occurred about half way in the next block between Fourth and Third, when the south side of Wilson’s car was on the black top two to three feet from the south edge of the black top; that the impact occurred around the right front fender; that Sammie Wilson apparently jerked the car to the left and stopped about four or five feet from the edge of the black top; that he could not see whether the man was on the pavement or off the pavement at the time of impact; that he observed tire marks about four or five feet long left by the Wilson car from the point of impact to the place it stopped. (Emphasis ours.)

Thelma Busby testified: She was a daughter of Ivy Smith; that at the time of the accident, Ivy Smith was on his way from his home to her home; that he had planned to go hunting with her husband.

Neva Moulper testified, according to the narrative statement of facts: That shortly before the accident, she was parked at a service station getting gasoline; that she saw an old man walk by “in front of me” walking down the road with a gun; that she saw him walking along the edge of the road and watched him until she couldn’t see him any longer; that she pulled out and turned down the road he was walking down; that she saw Mr. Wilson’s car stopped; that Mr. Wilson came running from the front of his car and over to the window of her car and said, “Call an ambulance, I have hit a man;” that she left to get the ambulance.

Mr. Smith died as a result of the accident. His gun was broken.

Special Issues Nos. 6, 7, 8, and 9, and the jury’s answers thereto, are as follows:

SPECIAL ISSUE NO. 6
Do you find from a preponderance of the evidence that Ivy Smith, just before the occurrence in question, failed to keep such a lookout as would have been kept by a person of ordinary prudence in the exercise of ordinary care acting under the same or similar circumstances?
Answer “We do” or “We do not”,
ANSWER We do
If you have answered Special Issue No. 6 “We do” and only in that event, then answer:
SPECIAL ISSUE NO. 7
Do you find from a preponderance of the evidence that such failure, if any, was a proximate cause of the occurrence in question ?
Answer: “We do” or “We do not”.
ANSWER We do
SPECIAL ISSUE NO. 8

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Bluebook (online)
431 S.W.2d 775, 1968 Tex. App. LEXIS 3094, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/smith-v-state-farm-insurance-co-texapp-1968.