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201 Ala. 489

78 So 395

Renfroe v. Collins & Co.

Supreme Court of Alabama

Decided November 15, 1917

Supreme Court of Alabama · decided 1917-11-15

Pugh, Judge. Action by E. S. Renfroe against Collins & Co., a partnership, for damages for the death of James Renfroe. Judgment for defendant, and plaintiff appeals. The defendant filed the following pleas, which are directed to be set out: (1) Not guilty.

Relies on Birmingham Railway, Light & Power Co. v. Ely

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Reversed and remanded · Decided 1917-11-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 19 later decisions — most recently July 2011

19 state decisions

9019171920193019401950196019701980199020002010decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

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¶1 On Rehearing.

McCLELLAN, J.

¶2 Counsel for appellee insist that the consideration and decision of this court in Karpeles v. City Ice Delivery Co., 73 South. 642, 1 treating special charges J and M, is opposed to the present decision that charge A, quoted in the opinion ante, invaded the province of the jury, and to give it was error to reverse. The difference between those instructions and that involved on this appeal is radical and apparent. There the negligence hypothesized, viz. the excessive speed of the motorcycle which collided with defendant’s automobile, was a character of negligence that might, in the order of causation have intervened to have afforded the sole (exclusive) proximate cause of the plaintiff’s injury, thereby denying, by the hypothesis, the ascription of plaintiff’s injury, for proximate cause, to either the negligence or the willful or wanton misconduct or omission of defendant’s chauffeur. Here the alternative hypothesis in charge A is predicated of the violation of an ordinance which could not, in any possible event, have intervened to sever or to interrupt the order of causation which the jury may have found was put into motion through the wanton or willful acts of the driver of the defendant’s truck. It was open to the jury to find under the evidence in this record that, notwithstanding the boy violated the ordinance by holding onto the truck while rolling. on skates in a public thoroughfare, the driver of the truck willfully or wantonly so ordered its course and speed as to proximately cause the boy’s injury. Certainly it could not be correctly said in this or any other case that under such circumstances the violation of *493 the ordinance was or could he the sole, exclusive proximate cause of the injury thus suffered. The decision in the case of B. R., L. & P. Co. v. Ely, 183 Ala. 383, 62 South. 816, is without bearing upon the question presented through the giving of charge A. quoted in the opinion ante. It is not possible to interpret this charge as submitting to the jury the inquiry “whether or not the defendant was guilty of willfulness or wantonness proximately contributing to the death of deceased.” A reconsideration of the error pronounced upon the court’s action in instructing the jury, at defendant’s request, that deceased was a trespasser and guilty of a violation of the law in holding onto defendant’s truck while on roller skates, confirms this court’s opinion in that regard. This court did not feel authorized to ignore or disregard plain, pertinent testimony so as to avert the implication of error from an instruction that invaded the jury’s province to pass upon such evidence. The extract from the oral charge of the court in which the jury was advised that:

“All persons are forbidden to use the streets of the city for skating thereon. To do so is an unlawful act of trespass on the part of the person so guilty”

¶3 —was not justified by the evidence; and to so instruct the jury was manifest error.

¶4 The application for rehearing is hence denied.

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