Randall v Tarrant
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | THE MASTER OF THE ROLLS,LORD JUSTICE JENKINS,LORD JUSTICE MORRIS |
| Judgment Date | 04 February 1955 |
| Judgment citation (vLex) | [1955] EWCA Civ J0204-3 |
| Court | Court of Appeal |
| Date | 04 February 1955 |
[1955] EWCA Civ J0204-3
In The Supreme Court of Judicature
Court of Appeal
The Master of the Rolls (Sir Raymond Evershed)
Lord Justice Jenkins and
Lord Justice Morris.
MR. JOHN STOCKER, instructed by Mr. John Holt, appeared for the Appellant (Plaintiff).
MR. GEOFFREY LANE, instructed by Messre. Horwood & James (Aylosbury), appeared for the Respondent (Defendant).
This case is by no means easy and has raised questions of no little interest. When Mr. Stooker first began to open the appeal I thought that he was faced with a short but fatal answer to the appeal; for this was an motion for damages for negligence and there is here a finding by the learned Judge that the Defendant was not negligent. Prima facie that would be a finding of fact from which, in a country court casethere could be no appeal to this Court; but after further attention to the argument of Mr. Steaker, and after hearing argument also from Mr. Lane, I have new reached a conclusion contrary to that which I was first inclined to entertain.
The facts may be very shortly stated. On 3rd August, 1955, which was August Bank Holiday in that year, the Plaintiff, accompanied by his wife, his son, another lady and a dog, had driven the motorcar which was subsequently damaged from their home until they reached a small byway or lane in the neighbourhood of Windsor. It was about 7 o'clock in the evening. The learned Judger said — there has been no question upon this point — that the lane was a public highway and it led only to farm property. Indeed the fields which lay on either side of the lane were part of the farm to which lay on either side of the lane were part of the farm to which it led, and we were told that the fee simple in that property belonged to Eton College, the Defendant, a farmer, being the tenant in possession.
The Plaintiff, having driven his car a little way up this narrow highway, drew it into the her wide and got out, accompanied by his son and the dog. He lefthis wife and the other lady passenger in the car. While the car was so stationary in the highway the Defendants, who had been taking advantage of the favourable weather to do some hay-making, drove out of one of the fields into the lane on a tractor to which was attached by means of an articulated coupling a baler, at one, of which there is what is called a string box of a width of 9 feet. The learned Judge found — there has been no question upon this — that having regard to the width of the lane the margin which was allowed for the Defendant to pace the Plaintiff's stationary car without impact was a small one of 6 inches to 9 inches, a margin which the Judge in his own language described as a dangerous margin of safety, a formula, as will presently appear, to which I attach a little significance.
The tractor successfully passed the Plaintiff's motorcar and so did not boiler until the string box was reached. Then the string box, as the Judge found, struck the offside wingof the Plaintiff's car and damaged it. The accident was not serious. The damage to the wing most hose to repair; but the Plaintiff was able to establish as further special damage, having regard to his occupation as a salesman for timber merchants, the cost of hiring another car for a number of days, so that the total damage which the Judge held, if the Plaintiff was entitled to recover, properly to be derived from the alleged negligence was £21. 1s. 5d.
There was an about conflict of evidence upon one matter. The Plaintiff and his non alleged that they were in the road at the time when the accident occurred and that they raw what happened. They were perhaps not unnaturally somewhat annoyed and, if I may guess somewhat from the conversation which later took place, the Defendant, also perhaps not unnaturally, became annoyed too. But the Judge quite plaintly disbelieved the Plaintiff and there Plaintiff's son. In particular he wholly discredited the somewhat extravagent estimate which the son gave of there speed of thaws tractor pulling a boiler in a narrow lane, which the son said was going at no less than 25 miles an hour.
Another matter upon which they were disbelieved has a bearing on a point of great interest taken by Mr. Lane. The Judge said (I quote from the note of his Judgment which as amended has been agreed between the two sides): "I am led to believe Plaintiff and son did not see the accident and were, in fact, the other side of the hedge". The significance of that finding is this. ON the other side of the hedge was the Defendant's field on which was standing hay. The Plaintiff and his son went at some stage clearly into the field, for they were warned to go off it by a policeman. They were in truth trespassers. According to the Defendant, the Plaintiff and his son at the time of the accident were still in the field trespassing. The Judge accepted in this matter, and indeed in other matters of conflict, the evidence of the Defendant in preference to that of the Plaintiff and his own.
So far that case appears therefore to be of this character. A man driving a tractor with a large agricultural implement in low upon a public highway in daylight seen stationary on that highway a motorcar. The question then arises, inevitably where the highway is narrow: Is there or is there not room to past. If in fact there was no room to pass and passage was impossible, and if you have a man who attempts so to do without pausing to make any further investigation, prima facie, if, as would be inevitably the result, a collision occure, I should have thought that the driver must be negligent. Mr. Lane did not contest that proposition. But here there was room to pass. There were some 6 inches to 8 inches to spare between the two vehicles when they were passing at the greatest width of the trailer; but in regard to that the Judge used this pregnant phrase: "It was a dangerous margin of safety". The Judge added a note about that phrase and I take it to mean that the road being so narrow and the baler being so wide, to pass in such circumstances was an enterprise attended with risk. It nodded obviously great care if a collision was to be avoided.
In those circumstances what is the evidence of the care taken? Accepting, as the Judge did and as I do, the evidence of the Defendant and his servant, Sidney Bride, it seems that as he approached the Plaintiff's motorcar he did reduce his speed to the very low rate of 2 miles an hour or thereabouts. The servant Bride was tested somewhere at the back of the trailed baler. He shouted to the Defendant: "I thick we can get through, guvnor". Acting upon that cheerful prophecy the Defendant proceeded on his way; but unfortunately the prophecy was falsified and the string box struck the car.
That I think is a fair summary of the evidence, subject only to this. In feet the Defendant said, and was believed, that he did not see that there were in the car at the time two persons, the Plaintiff's wife and the other lady. The conclusion which the Judge reached upon that matter and upon that evidence was as follows (I read again from the jointly agreed"Defendant reached sped to safety consistent with long vehicle behind him and signals from man behind his and was directed by man and was not guilty of negligence in attempting to pass and proceed on his lawful occasion. It is too much to say should be precluded from moving as he had a small margin of safety. He saw nobody in the car and he had to make up his mind to give up or to go on and attempt to do it. He was justified in making the attempt with all possible care and without excessive speed. Not infurer of Plaintiff's car against possibility of its being streck".
It is said by Mr. Lane with no little force that there was evidence which justified the conclusion, and the vital conclusion, that he was justified in making the attempt "with all possible care". But in my judgment there was not. A driver along a highway who seed a stationary vehicle or other object on the highway plainly has to take all possible care to avoid a collision and, if there was in fact room to but nevertheless a collision occure, then it seems to me that prima facie he has failed to discharge the duty which those circumstances have laid upon him. I am unable to conclude that by merely reducing the speed and thereafter relying upon the prognostication of the servant behind was taking all the care he should here done. It is I hope not illegitimate to have somewhat in one's mind the kind of operation in which so many of us are sometimes engaged when driving a motorcar in or out of a place where there is very little room between other cars. If you have a friend or another person available, it is common knowledge that that other person often watches and tells you if as you slowly proceed it is...
To continue reading
Request your trial
-
DPP v Jones and Another
...at all seasons of the year freely and at their will to pass and repass without let or hindrance." 75 It was reflected subsequently in Randall v. Tarrant [1955] 1 W.L.R. 255 where Lord Evershed M.R. said, at p. 259: "The rights of members of the public to use the highway are, prima facie, ri......
-
Ward v Lowe and Roach
...he has taken all the steps which a reasonable man would take in the circumstances, that is, all possible care to avoid a collision: Randall v. Tarrant [1955] 1 W.L.R. 255; Sibbles v. Jamaica Omnibus Services Ltd. (1965) 9 W.I.R. 56 and Coelho v. Agard, High Court Suit No. 2394 of 1973 (deci......
-
Public Prosecutions Dir. v. Jones, (1999) 237 N.R. 18 (HL)
...Graham and Burns (1888), 16 Cox C.C. 420, refd to. [paras. 49, 76]. R. v. Cunningham - see R. v. Graham and Burns. Randall v. Tarrant, [1955] 1 W.L.R. 255 (C.A.), refd to. [paras. 50, 83, 126]. Attorney General v. Antrobus, [1905] 2 Ch. 188, refd to. [paras. 52, 86]. Ellenborough Park, Re; ......
-
Annetta Williams v M & M Jamaica Ltd First Defendant and Others
...has not, at all been displaced by him. See Henderson v Henry E. Jenkins & Sons [1970] AC 282 at p. 301, per Lord Pearson. See also Randall v Tarrant [1955] 1 All ER 600. 39 This really does, on the whole, on this court's view of the facts, appear to undoubtedly be a claim which has arisen a......