Donahue v. Western Casualty & Surety Co.
Donahue v. Western Casualty & Surety Co.
Opinion of the Court
The important issue upon this appeal is whether the trial court was justified in changing the answer of the jury in the special verdict wherein the jury found that the plaintiff’s decedent was not negligent with respect to the manner in which he turned to the left and proceeded across the northbound lane of Highway 100.
We have stated before that the facts in cases involving a collision between motor vehicles are so dissimilar that we look for principles rather than precedents in the earlier decisions. Each case must be considered upon its own facts. We have reviewed a great many cases in which both questions were submitted in the same verdict.
It is not clear from the record just what Donahue was attempting to do prior to the collision. In both briefs the parties discuss sec. 85.18 (5), Stats., dealing with vehicles turning left at intersections. Donahue might have been making a U-turn that carried him below the intersection or it may be that he was planning to enter the driveway into the oil station at the southeast corner of the intersection. If Donahue was making a U-turn, then he violated the provisions of sec. 85.17 (5) by turning at a place not an intersection. If he was turning into the driveway to the oil station from Highway 100, then he was violating sec. 85.175 (1).
The question as submitted in the special verdict was general and would cover any of the situations and was a proper question to be submitted. His maneuvers with his truck were certainly violative of one of the statutes regulating the turning movements of motor vehicles. There can be no other conclusion from the record but that he was negligent as a matter of law and that the violation was causal. Under the facts
By the Court. — Judgment affirmed.
Dissenting Opinion
(dissenting). On the basis of competent evidence in this record the jury was warranted in determining that Theodore C. Egelhoff was not confronted with an emergency situation; that John Donahue, the deceased, negotiated no sudden turn of his truck into the pathway of the oncoming Egelhoff vehicle; that Theodore C. Egelhoff’s failure to exercise a proper lookout after his first observation of the Donahue truck, may well have been a greater factor in producing the collision than was Donahue’s failure of lookout and management of his truck. The verdict of the jury ought not to have been disturbed. For these reasons I am not able to join in the expressed view of the majority that the deceased, John Donahue, was as a matter of law at least as negligent as the respondent, Theodore C. Egelhoff. This situation falls within the rule declared in Czerniakowski v. National Ice & Coal Co. 252 Wis. 112, 31 N. W. (2d) 156, to the effect that if the evidence is conflicting, or if the inferences to be drawn from the credible evidence are' doubtful
Reference
- Full Case Name
- Donahue, Administratrix v. Western Casualty & Surety Company and others
- Status
- Published