169 Iowa 444 | Iowa | 1915
— The petition alleges that the defendants Leitzen are owners of a garage in the town of Mapleton, where they keep automobiles for sale and hire and hold themselves out to the public as being engaged in that business; that in pursuit of such business and occupation they let for hire to the defendant Kraft a Ford automobile, knowing at the time
The defendants admit the keeping of a garage by the Leitzens, that they let a Ford automobile to Kraft and knew that he intended to use it in taking his family to the carnival at Ute. They admit also that plaintiff was injured by a wire which was accidentally struck by said car while being operated by Kraft, but they each and all deny any negligence on their part with respect to the use of said ear or to the injury suffered by plaintiff.
The evidence, so far as material to the appeal, tends to show that Kraft was accustomed to operate automobiles but had no previous experience with a Ford car. At the time he hired this car, one of the defendants got into the car with Kraft and backed the ear out of the garage and gave him some instruction or direction as to its use. Kraft then drove the ear to the vicinity of another garage or shop, where he was further instructed as to the manner of operating a Ford. He then drove to Ute and, while there operating it in a manner
Plaintiff having made this showing and rested his case, the court sustained the motion of the defendants Leitzen for a directed verdict in their favor. The plaintiff appeals.
Our attention is also called to the case of Tuller v. Talbot, 23 Ill. 357, where the driver of a stage coach placed the reins in the hands of a passenger by whose negligence another passenger in the coach was injured, and the owner was held to respond in damages. This and other similar cases cited are to be classed with the English precedents above referred to and are not here in point. The owner of the stage line was a common carrier of passengers. The passenger who was injured had no control over the driver. The owner was in duty bound to protect the passenger against the negligence of the servant, and the act of the servant in passing the reins to a third person was in legal effect the act of the owner, who thereby became responsible for the negligence of the substituted driver. The defendants in this case were not carriers. They let their vehicles for hire, assuming no responsibility for negligence or recklessness of the hirer, save, perhaps, under exceptional circumstances such as we have already
II. It is next said that an automobile is of such character that, while perhaps not per se a dangerous instrument, it may easily become such, and the owner is therefore bound to the exercise of greater care than would be required' were there less danger in its operation. There is more or less danger in the use of vehicles of any kind. The motorcycle, the bicycle, the stage coach, the ordinary carriage drawn by horses, all have their possibilities of peril and there is .room for difference of opinion concerning the various degrees of danger to be apprehended therefrom. The great body of those who use the various instrumentalities of travel are persons of ordinary prudence, while the incompetent or negligent is the exception. The fact that here and there a driver carelessly or recklessly converts his vehicle into an engine of injury or destruction to others is not a sufficient reason for requiring the owner of such vehicles for hire to test and ascertain the competency and skill of every customer before entrusting him with the custody of a car.
Nor is there any likeness, as counsel seems to think, between this case and that of the livery stable keeper who wilfully lets for hire an animal he knows to be vicious or dangerous. If the car in this case was defective in some respect which rendered it incapable of control or made it a source of special danger, and defendants had allowed it to go • out in that condition and thereby plaintiff had been injured, a very .different question would be presented. But so far as shown, the car was in perfect condition, and the sole cause of plaintiff’s injury was the carelessness or forgetfulness of Kraft, who, in an emergency, threw a lever the wrong way, thereby causing a sudden acceleration of speed instead of cheeking it, as he intended. Had. he been driving a hired team and in some way had heedlessly got the reins crossed' in his hands,
The testimony in the case discloses no cause of action against the appellees and the judgment below is therefore— Affirmed.