148 A. 377 | Conn. | 1930
The complaint alleged that the defendant rented an automobile to one Augustine, who invited plaintiff's intestate to ride in it as his guest, and that the latter, while such guest, was killed as a result of the heedless and reckless operation of the car by Augustine. The action was brought under the statute (Public Acts of 1925, Chap. 195, § 21) which made any person who leased a motor vehicle to another responsible for damage to persons or property caused by the operation of the motor vehicle while so leased, which we have construed as imposing liability only in case of the tortious operation of the rented car (Levy v. Daniels' U-Drive Auto Renting Co., Inc.,
In his additional appeal the plaintiff predicates error upon the refusal of the court to charge the jury as requested by him, and upon the charge as given. The evidence establishes beyond question that the car was being operated at the time of the accident with reckless disregard of the rights of others and the defendant concedes this to be the fact. The only remaining question, and the one decisive of the case, was as to who was the driver of the car. The appeal does not question the correctness of any portion of the charge which dealt with this issue except the statement by the court that there was no claim that Furcolo was a passenger for hire, and that he was either the driver of the car or a guest of the driver, which was clearly correct. In so far as the requests to charge contained correct statements of law which it was the duty of the court to give to the jury, they were sufficiently covered by the charge as given. The complaint alleged that plaintiff's intestate was being transported as the guest of Augustine, the alleged driver of the car, and that his death was caused "by the heedlessness of the said Daniel Augustine, and by his reckless disregard of the rights of others." Our so-called guest statute exempts the owner or operator of a motor vehicle from liability to one being transported as his guest in case of accident, *544
"unless such accident shall have been intentional on the part of said owner or operator or caused by his heedlessness or his reckless disregard of the rights of others." The only criticism of the charge pursued upon the argument was that the court erred in charging that the plaintiff must show that the driver of the car "has been guilty of some conduct so that the accident can be said to have been intentional on the part of the driver, or caused by his heedlessness or his reckless disregard of the rights of others." This clause in the charge was substantially in the language of the statute, but the contention of the plaintiff is that though the statute excepts from its operation a situation where the accident itself is intentional, which is something of an anomaly, the jury should have been told that the test was whether the conduct which caused the accident was intentional and that liability would follow from intentional misconduct. This is almost the precise language in an earlier portion of the charge where the court, having read the statute to the jury, undertook to expound it and stated the conditions which must exist to create liability under it. The court said: "But this statute which I have read shows that there must be one of three [obviously a misprint for two] conditions in order to create the liability which is spoken of. First, in order to create liability, the act or misconduct of the operator or owner of the car must have been intentional. . . . This, then, is the test which must be applied to the conduct of this operator of the car, if the plaintiff is to recover under the statute. It is not for the jury to satisfy themselves that the driver of the car was merely negligent in the ordinary sense of the word and failed to exercise that degree of care which would be exercised by an ordinarily prudent person, but they must go further and must show that the conduct of the driver was that *545
which is described in the statute as intentional on the part of the operator, or caused by his heedlessness or his reckless disregard of the rights of others." The court thus made it clear to the jury that the accident could be said to be intentional within the meaning of the statute when it was caused by the intentional misconduct of the owner or operator of the car. This was in accord with our construction of the statute. Silver
v. Silver,
Other portions of the charge not assigned among the reasons of appeal we do not consider.
There is no error.
In this opinion the other judges concurred.