Vockel v. Rhynearson

197 N.E. 705, 101 Ind. App. 637, 1935 Ind. App. LEXIS 171
CourtIndiana Court of Appeals
DecidedOctober 16, 1935
DocketNo. 15,050.
StatusPublished
Cited by4 cases

This text of 197 N.E. 705 (Vockel v. Rhynearson) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Indiana Court of Appeals primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Vockel v. Rhynearson, 197 N.E. 705, 101 Ind. App. 637, 1935 Ind. App. LEXIS 171 (Ind. Ct. App. 1935).

Opinion

Kime, J.

The appellee filed a complaint herein, against the appellant, alleging that he, a pedestrian, had been injured by the negligence of the appellant while driving an automobile on a street in the city of Anderson. The specific acts of negligence charged in the complaint are that the appellant drove his automobile at a high, danger *639 ous and unlawful rate of speed at the time while the roadway was wet and during the time it was raining; that he negligently failed to keep a lookout for pedestrians while so driving and that he negligently and unlawfully failed to give any notice or warning of the approach of the automobile. The complaint further alleged that appellee was free from contributory negligence and that as a result of the accident he had a broken left leg, bone broken near the hip, severe nervous shock to the entire nervous system, bruises and contusions about the head, body and limbs and a sprained back. That as a result thereof he had been forced to become a patient in a hospital and suffered great mental and physical pain and forced to give up his regular vocation forever and that he had been permanently injured and would remain a cripple for the rest of his natural life.

To this complaint was filed a general denial, following which the cause was submitted to a jury, which returned a verdict for $3,000.00 in favor of the appellee, together with answers to interrogatories submitted by the appellant. The appellant filed a motion for a new trial and assigns as error here the action of the court in overruling a motion for a new trial and also the overruling of a motion by the appellant for judgment on the answers to the interrogatories.

Under the motion for new trial the appellant properly set forth as reasons why the same should be granted the alleged erroneous ruling of the court on the admission, in evidence, of the answers to two sets of questions, to which he had properly excepted, which questions and answers will be explained in more detail hereafter, and as further grounds that the court erred in giving two instructions, and also that the damages assessed were excessive.

*640 *639 As to the interrogatories it has been said many times that in determining whether the court erred in overruling *640 a motion for judgment on the answers to interrogatories that this court can look only to the complaint, the answers, the general verdict and proper and relevant interrogatories which elicited material and substantive facts reasonably construed as a whole, and that all reasonable presumptions must be indulged in, in favor of the general verdict, and that nothing can be presumed in favor of the answers to interrogatories.

The interrogatories and answers disclose that the collision occurred about five o’clock in the afternoon of November 20,1931, on a street in the city of Anderson; that the street was straight for a distance of five hundred feet in both directions from the point of the collision and that the appellee alighted from a parked car at the north curb of said street, from the side of the car next to the sidewalk and walked to the front end of the car and passed the same and stepped down into the street and as he did so looked both ways for approaching cars and that the appellant was driving his car, at the time, at the rate of thirty-five miles per hour; that he did not keep a lookout for pedestrians in the street, as he approached the point of the collision and that he did not see appellee until his car was within two feet of appellee.

The appellant complains of the ruling of the court in refusing to render judgment on the answers to interrogatories basing his main contention particularly on interrogatories 11 and 13, which, with the answers thereto, are as follows:

“If you answer interrogatory No. 10 ‘Yes,’ did plaintiff then step down from the curb to the paved roadway of said street, and immediately look both ways for any approaching automobile?” “Yes.” However the answers to the other interrogatories do not show that when the appellee was at this point his view was unobstructed, so the answer to this interrogatory *641 avails the appellant nothing. “While the plaintiff was crossing Pendleton Avenue, as alleged in his complaint, and when he had reached a point in line with the south side of the parked automobile from which he had. alighted, could the plaintiff in the exercise of ordinary care then have seen defendant’s automobile approaching?” “Yes.” It does not appear from the interrogatories and their answers where the automobile of the appellant was when the appellee reached this point, nor where, in the street, such a point was. Nor does it appear whether appellee, after having seen the approaching car, could have done anything to have avoided the accident. The. answers to the interrogatories are not in irreconcilable conflict with the general verdict and consequently there was no error in overruling the motion.

The appellant complains of the admission over objection of certain questions and answers thereto relative .to a bill which the physicians submitted for services, to which questions and the answers elicited thereto appellant obj ected. As shown above, the complaint set out the injury received by the appellee which the allegations charge were rather serious.

The appellant contends that the' evidence elicited by these questions and answers was outside the issues and inadmissible in the absence of allegations warranting its introduction and cite Chicago, etc., R. Co. v. Bicke (1923), 79 Ind. App. 576, 137 N. E. 565, as their only Indiana authority. In that case the party sought to introduce evidence of a situation that developed after the accident to the effect that the injured party was developing tuberculosis and, there having been no allegation in the complaint warranting the introduction of such evidence, it was properly excluded, but that is not the situation here. These expenses or damages are the natural result of the injury and from the seriousness thereof the complaint properly advised the appellant that in such an *642 injury that such medical attention would be necessary. The complaint was amply sufficient to advise the defendant of damages of this character. The Evansville and Terre Haute Railroad Company v. Holcomb (1893), 9 Ind. App. 198, 36 N. E. 39; Indianapolis Traction, etc., Co. v. Gillaspy (1914), 56 Ind. App. 332, 105 N. E. 242; Muncie Pulp Co. v. Keesling (1905), 166 Ind. 479, 76 N. E. 1002; Chicago and Erie Railroad Company v. Steele (1918), 187 Ind. 358, 118 N. E. 824, 119 N. E. 483. The court did not err in admitting this evidence.

Another question and answer is as follows:

“I will ask you what your family consisted of prior to this accident?”, which question was addressed to the wife of the appellee, who was testifying in his behalf in her examination in chief.

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Bluebook (online)
197 N.E. 705, 101 Ind. App. 637, 1935 Ind. App. LEXIS 171, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/vockel-v-rhynearson-indctapp-1935.