Tulsa City Lines, Inc. v. Johnston

1951 OK 8, 226 P.2d 937, 204 Okla. 38, 1951 Okla. LEXIS 390
CourtSupreme Court of Oklahoma
DecidedJanuary 16, 1951
Docket33707
StatusPublished

This text of 1951 OK 8 (Tulsa City Lines, Inc. v. Johnston) 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
Tulsa City Lines, Inc. v. Johnston, 1951 OK 8, 226 P.2d 937, 204 Okla. 38, 1951 Okla. LEXIS 390 (Okla. 1951).

Opinion

O’NEAL, J.

This is an appeal from a judgment in favor of defendant in error, plaintiff below, against plaintiff in error, in an action to recover damages for personal injuries against plaintiff in error and C. Onas Briggs.

The cause was tried to a jury which returned a verdict in favor of plaintiff and against the defendant Tulsa City Lines, Inc., in the sum of $15,000. The jury did not return a verdict either way as to the defendant C. Onas Briggs, and the trial court entered judgment in favor of defendant C. Onas Briggs.

No appeal has been taken as to defendant Briggs, and the judgment has become final as to said defendant.

Motion for new trial was filed on behalf of defendant Tulsa City Lines, Inc. The trial court apparently required a remittitur by plaintiff in the sum of $3,000 before overruling the motion for a new trial. The plaintiff acceded thereto and in open court filed a re-mittitur in the sum of $3,000, whereupon the trial court overruled the motion for a new trial, and defendant Tulsa City Lines, Inc., appeals.

*39 There are seven assignments of alleged error presented under four propositions. The first proposition is that the court erred in rendering judgment against the Tulsa City Lines, Inc.

The contention is that because the plaintiff alleged that defendant C. Onas Briggs, the servant, agent and employee of the defendant Tulsa City Lines, Inc., was negligent in failing to ascertain if any passengers were unloading through the rear doors before closing said doors and the jury returned no verdict against the defendant C. Onas Briggs, and the court rendered judgment in favor of C. Onas Briggs, it was error to render judgment against defendant Tulsa City Lines, Inc.

In support of this contention defendant, Tulsa City Lines, Inc., cites Chicago, R. I. & P. Ry. Co. v. Austin, 43 Okla. 698, 144 P. 1069; St. Louis & S. F. R. Co. v. Williams, 55 Okla. 682, 155 P. 249, and Chicago, R. I. & P. Ry. Co. v. Reinhart, 61 Okla. 72, 160 P. 51.

The rule as stated in St. Louis & S. F. R. Co. v. Williams, supra, is:

“ ‘In an action for damages for personal injuries, where a railway company and several of its employees who were charged with the commission of the acts of negligence which caused the injury were joined as parties defendant, and where from the negligence pleaded and the proof made the railway company, if liable at all, is liable upon the principle of respond-eat superior, it is error to render judgment against the railway company upon the verdict of the jury which found in favor of the plaintiff as against the railway company and in favor of one of the employees; separate demurrers to the evidence having been sustained as to the others.’ ”

Citing Chicago, R. I. & P. Ry. Co. v. Austin, supra. But in the instant case plaintiff, in addition to the charge of negligence as against defendant C. Onas Briggs, the agent and employee of defendant Tulsa City Lines, Inc., alleged negligence as against the defendant corporation itself in that she alleged:

“4. That the defendant, Tulsa City Lines, was guilty of negligence in failing to provide sufficient buses for the transportation of passengers, and, as a result of such failure the bus was so crammed with standing passengers that the driver was unable to see, from his seat, whether or not the passengers had fully passed through the rear doors before closing said doors.”

In Chicago, R. I. & P. Ry. Co. v. Pedigo, 123 Okla. 213, 252 P. 1095, it was held:

“A verdict for an employee of the railroad company who is joined with the latter in an action for tort does not relieve the master from liability as vice principal, where the evidence is such that the jury may have concluded that the negligence of another employee, who was not joined in the action, was the proximate cause of the injury.”

In this case the evidence was such that the jury may have concluded that the driver of the bus here involved was not C. Onas Briggs, but was some other employee of defendant Tulsa City Lines, Inc., and that it was his negligence which was the proximate cause of the injury, or the jury may have found that the independent or separate negligence of the master itself was the proximate cause of the injury.

In S. H. Kress & Co. v. Maddox, 201 Okla. 190, 203 P. 2d 706, it is held:

“It is not error to refuse to instruct the jury to return a verdict in favor of the master when the jury has returned a verdict in favor of servant, sued jointly, where it appears that other servants of defendant, not parties to the action, performed the alleged negligent acts.” .

Defendant Tulsa City Lines, Inc., recognizes that case and the rule stated therein, but insists that Chicago, R. I. & P. Ry. Co. v. Pedigo, supra, was not the applicable law at the time the S. H. Kress case was decided, in that the Pedigo case had been overruled by Mid-Central Fish Co. v. Gentry Poul *40 try & Egg Co., 189 Okla. 521, 118 P. 2d 225.

In this case plaintiff’s cause of action is not based entirely upon the principle of respondeat superior. She alleges in her petition that the defendant Tulsa City Lines, Inc., was guilty of negligence in failing to provide sufficient buses for the transportation of passengers and as a result of such failure the bus was so crowded with standing passengers that the driver was unable to see from his seat whether or not the passengers had fully passed through the rear doors before closing said doors. She further alleges that shortly after 8:30 o’clock in the morning of November 19, 1946, plaintiff boarded a bus at the corner of Seventh and College streets; that said bus was owned and operated by defendant Tulsa City Lines, Inc., and makes regular runs between the University district of Tulsa and Red Fork or Carbondale; that said bus was headed toward the downtown section of Tulsa and was being driven by the defendant C. Onas Briggs, an employee and agent of defendant Tulsa City Lines, Inc., and further:

“That plaintiff was accompanied on said bus by her son, Randolph Franklin Johnston, an infant at the age of twenty five months, and that when the bus was proceeding on Sixth Street and approached Lansing Street, plaintiff signaled for a stop, intending to alight from the bus at the intersection of Sixth Street with Lansing Street; that by this time the bus was jammed and packed with passengers; that the aisle was filled with standees; and that after the bus had stopped and plaintiff, holding her child in her left arm, was in the act of leaving the bus, and was nearly off the bus, the doors of the bus closed and the rubber flanges of said door caught the heel and shank of the shoe on plaintiffs right foot, not enough to retain the shoe, but sufficient to trip plaintiff and cause her to lose her balance, which caused the plaintiff with her child to fall to the pavement, and that the driver of the bus was apparently not aware of the occurrence for he drove the bus away.”

13 O. S. 1941 §34 provides:

“A carrier of persons for reward must not overcrowd or overload his vehicle.”

13 O. S. 1941 §41 provides:

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Related

St. Louis S. F. R. Co. v. Williams
1916 OK 145 (Supreme Court of Oklahoma, 1916)
St. Louis-S. F. Ry. Co. v. Bell
1928 OK 639 (Supreme Court of Oklahoma, 1928)
Chicago, R. I. & P. Ry. Co. v. Austin
144 P. 1069 (Supreme Court of Oklahoma, 1914)
Chicago, R. I. & P. R. Co. v. Reinhart
1916 OK 693 (Supreme Court of Oklahoma, 1916)
Chicago, R. I. & P. Ry. Co. v. Pedigo
1926 OK 118 (Supreme Court of Oklahoma, 1926)
Mid-Central Fish Co. v. Gentry Poultry & Egg Co.
1941 OK 339 (Supreme Court of Oklahoma, 1941)
S. H. Kress & Co. v. Maddox
1949 OK 41 (Supreme Court of Oklahoma, 1949)
Lobner v. Metropolitan Street-railway Co.
101 P. 463 (Supreme Court of Kansas, 1909)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
1951 OK 8, 226 P.2d 937, 204 Okla. 38, 1951 Okla. LEXIS 390, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/tulsa-city-lines-inc-v-johnston-okla-1951.