Rogers v. Benedict
Rogers v. Benedict
Opinion of the Court
(after stating the facts). In Schattilly v. Yonker, 347 Mich 660, we considered the dangers of wholesale adoption of self-serving and argumentative requests to charge submitted exclusively by one party. Here, as in Schattilly, the jury charge (pertaining to the question of liability) was made up from defendant’s requests as preferred. The first 2 paragraphs of the quoted portion of such charge, together with occasional minor changes of phraseology, constitute the only exceptions. What we have quoted is “replete with error” (quotation from Schattilly, p 668 of report). It led the jury to understand that Mrs. Rogers “had a reciprocal duty to operate her automobile on said 20th street so as not to collide with another vehicle on or about to enter said 20th street;” to understand that Mrs. Rogers was unqualifiedly burdened with duty to “anticipate that it (the milk truck) might be backed out into the highway;” to understand that the defendant was free from negligence “in starting to back his truck” providing he and his helper “saw no moving traffic;” to understand that applicable duties of the 2 drivers became “equal and coextensive and each owed the same duty to discover the other and take the means available to avoid the collision,” and to understand that Mrs. Rogers was guilty of negligence if she failed “to observe the movement of the truck.”
Mrs. Rogers, initially at least, was possessed of that general right a motorist enjoys when starting or proceeding lawfully forward on a public way; the right to assume that drivers of vehicles parked or stopped ahead in private ways will not move into his rightful path save only when relative distances (and, usually, rates of speed) reasonably permit such movement. Such assumptive right, applied to the disputed, as well as undisputed, facts before us, brings the mentioned emergency doctrine into rightful instructional play. This does not mean that the trial judge was obligated, in the absence of properly couched request of plaintiffs, to instruct the jury with respect to such emergency doctrine. It does mean that the instructions we have criticized constituted reversible error in the absence of an appropriate proviso addressed to employment of that doctrine should the facts as found by the jury so warrant.
Reversed for new trial. Costs to plaintiffs.
CLS 1952, § 257.648 (Stat Ann 1952 Rev § 9. 2348). — Reporter.
Case-law data current through December 31, 2025. Source: CourtListener bulk data.