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• Title: Southern National Ins. Co. v. Williams
• Author : Supreme Court of Arkansas
• Release Date : January 04, 1955
• Genre: Law,Books,Professional & Technical,
• Pages : * pages
• Size : 65 KB

Description

This suit for damages arises from a traffic collision that occurred in Saline County on October 13, 1953. Ruben C. Knabe,
the driver of one of the vehicles, was killed, and his two passengers, J. Harold Williams and Norman E. Smith, were seriously
injured. Upon these causes of action the jury returned verdicts totaling $145,000 against the appellant, whose agent, John
N. Calaway, was driving the other vehicle. The appellant contends that it was entitled to a directed verdict, that certain
asserted errors require a new trial at least, and that the verdicts are excessive. The evidence, from the appellees' point of view, discloses that the collision happened in this manner: Knabe and his two
companions were residents of Little Rock and were working for the same employer in Saline County. At about four-thirty on
the afternoon in question they finished their day's work and started driving toward Little Rock. On a straight stretch in
the highway between Bryant and Bauxite they overtook and began to pass a dump truck. At about the same time Calaway, approaching
from the opposite direction at seventy or seventy-five miles an hour, entered the straight stretch and came toward the pickup
truck that Knabe was driving. Calaway's wheels skidded on the gravel shoulder on his right-hand side of the highway, and he
temporarily lost control of his car. When Calaway completely regained the pavement his car was traveling at an angle, so that
he crossed his own lane of traffic and struck the left side of the Knabe truck with his own right front fender. Upon a sharply
disputed point there is substantial evidence to the effect that when [224 Ark Page 941] the collision occurred Knabe had
passed the dump truck and had just returned to his own side of the highway: In view of Calaway's speed, his loss of control,
and the diagonal position of his car at the moment of impact, it cannot be seriously contended that there was no evidence
of negligence for the jury. Instead, the appellant, argues that it was physically impossible for the collision to have been
seen by certain key witnesses who were traveling a short distance ahead of Knabe and whose attention was attracted by Calaway's
recklessness. Counsel take certain estimates of speed and distance on the part of these witnesses and undertake to prove thereby
that these men must necessarily have already passed the curve at the end of the straight stretch and lost sight of the scene
when the collision took place. Such arguments are commonplace in cases of this kind and do not require for their refutation
a demonstration that require is accurate in every particular. Obviously the argument assumes that the speeds and distances
given are correct and that the rest of the testimony is deliberate perjury, made out of whole cloth. But it is for the jury
to determine such matters of credibility; that body is free to accept the detailed eyewitness accounts of the collision as
the truth and to regard contradicting estimates of speed and distance as mistakes of judgment on the part of the observers.

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