T. E. Mercer Trucking Company v. Swor

470 S.W.2d 65, 1971 Tex. App. LEXIS 2423
CourtCourt of Appeals of Texas
DecidedJuly 29, 1971
DocketNo. 7246
StatusPublished
Cited by1 cases

This text of 470 S.W.2d 65 (T. E. Mercer Trucking Company v. Swor) 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
T. E. Mercer Trucking Company v. Swor, 470 S.W.2d 65, 1971 Tex. App. LEXIS 2423 (Tex. Ct. App. 1971).

Opinion

KEITH, Justice.

We review a judgment awarding damages for personal injuries and property damage arising out of a collision between an automobile and a truck-trailer combination. The accident occurred on a clear day on a straight, level, four-lane divided highway with both vehicles proceeding in the same direction. According to plaintiff, he was alone in his car and was proceeding north on U.S. Highway 59 in San Jacinto County enroute from Houston to Lufkin. He describes the highway as being composed of four lanes divided into two opposing routes of traffic separated by a grassy median. Each lane is approximately twelve feet in width and there is an improved shoulder on each side of each of [66]*66the opposing lanes of traffic. Only a white painted dividing stripe separates the two lanes in the northbound roadway.

Plaintiff testified that he was going at a speed of approximately sixty miles per hour and was in the outside or right-hand lane of the northbound roadway. He first observed in his rear view mirror a truck in the same lane some thousand yards to his rear, but did not continue to observe the truck thereafter. He testified that he continued in the same lane until he was struck from the rear by the truck which he had previously seen. The truck struck the left rear of his vehicle with its right front bumper, causing his car to be “turned completely around and slid sideways until it hit a fence”, knocking down several fence posts on the easterly right-of-way line of the roadway, before coming to rest. After the impact, the truck continued some 1200 yards before stopping upon the right shoulder of the highway. There were no other vehicles in the area at the time of the accident, nor any witnesses other than our two drivers.

Plaintiff was positive that he continued in his righthand or outside lane at all times after observing the truck in his mirror until the time of the impact; he denied changing lanes or swerving to the left; but, he admitted that he did not observe the truck except the one time when it was far behind him. Plaintiff testified that when his vehicle was struck, the front of the truck overrode the rear of his car in the trunk area, forcing the bumper guard into the pavement where he later found a gouge mark. This mark, according to plaintiff (and he was corroborated in this by a highway patrolman), was near the white stripe which marked the division between the two northbound lanes, but inside of the outside lane thereof.

The truck driver, although a defendant in the cause, did not testify and his only explanation of the cause of the accident came from plaintiff’s account of his conversations with the driver and the highway patrolman’s version of his conversation with the two drivers. Upon direct examination by his counsel, plaintiff said that when the driver walked up to where he was, “he asked me what in the hell happened”, to which plaintiff replied: “I don’t know. You was driving it. I wasn’t.” Plaintiff then quoted the driver as having said, “ T must have dropped off to sleep.’ ”

Highway patrolman Ryan, investigating the accident a short time later, talked with both drivers. He was tendered by plaintiff’s counsel and, upon direct examination, testified that the truck driver told him (in plaintiff’s presence) that plaintiff was in the outside lane and that he (the truck driver) was overtaking plaintiff’s vehicle when “the car swerved into his lane of traffic and then back into — into his own.” Defendants, upon cross-examination of the patrolman, elicited from him the fact that the truck driver also said that as he was attempting to pass plaintiff upon plaintiff’s left side, plaintiff “came across the dividing line * * * he was changing lanes.” Ryan identified the gouge mark in the pavement as being inside of the outside lane and said that the right front of the truck struck the left rear of the automobile.

The jury found that plaintiff failed to keep a proper lookout “to the rear of his vehicle” immediately before the accident, and that such failure was a proximate cause of the collision. Upon plaintiff’s motion for judgment non obstante vere-dicto, the court disregarded the defensive lookout issues and entered judgment for the plaintiff upon the remaining findings of the jury. The action of the court in disregarding the lookout issues found against plaintiff and in refusing to enter judgment for defendants based thereon, forms the basis of the first two points urged by the defendants.

In passing upon such points, we recognize the rule stated by Chief Justice Calvert in C. & R. Transport, Inc. v. Campbell, 406 S.W.2d 191, 194 (Tex.Sup., 1966) that:

“A jury’s answer to a special issue may be disregarded only when it has no sup[67]*67port in the evidence or when the issue is immaterial.”

Or, as said by the same author in Texas & Pacific Railway Company v. McCleery, 418 S.W.2d 494, 496 (Tex.Sup., 1967), “In deciding whether there is such evidence [to support the jury’s findings] we must honor the well established rule which requires that we view the evidence in its most favorable light in support of the verdict.” We had occasion to review the authorities on the question in Harris v. Texas Employers’ Insurance Association, 447 S.W.2d 211, 212-213 (Tex.Civ.App., Beaumont, 1969, error ref., n. r. e.).

The trial court was not authorized to disregard the jury’s answers because the evidence might have been factually insufficient to support such answers; only if there was no evidence supporting the findings would such action have been proper. Garza v. Alviar, 395 S.W.2d 821, 824 (Tex. Sup., 1965); Burch v. Southwest Title Company, 450 S.W.2d 752, 753 (Tex.Civ.App., San Antonio, 1970, no writ).

The rule of law which places a duty upon a lead driver to keep a lookout for vehicles overtaking him from the rear is subject to some rather severe limitations. The defendants, with commendable candor, “recognize the very general rule in this State that a lead driver is under no duty to keep a lookout for traffic approaching from the rear” with certain exceptions noted in several cases which they cite.

Chief Justice Chadick in Hatcher v. Mewbourn, 457 S.W.2d 151, 153 (Tex.Civ.App., Texarkana, 1970, error ref., n. r. e.), has assembled the authorities upon the question and concludes from his examination :

“Summed up broadly, public policy imposes a duty upon a motorist when operating a vehicle on a public street to be alert and on watch for all that affects safe operation and is normally visible to him in the exercise of due care.”

But, as was said by Justice Stephenson, speaking to the point more specifically in Bourbon v. Glover, 431 S.W.2d 650, 652 (Tex.Civ.App., Beaumont, 1968, no writ) :

“The general rule in Texas is that the lead driver is under no duty to keep a lookout for traffic which approaches from the rear. Solana v. Hill, Tex.Civ.App., 348 S.W.2d 481.

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Bluebook (online)
470 S.W.2d 65, 1971 Tex. App. LEXIS 2423, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/t-e-mercer-trucking-company-v-swor-texapp-1971.