Jones v Dunkel

[1959] HCA 8

HIGH COURT OF AUSTRALIA

Dixon C.J., Kitto, Taylor, Menzies and Windeyer JJ.

JONES v. DUNKEL

(1959) 101 CLR 298

3 March 1959

Negligence—Practice

Negligence—Action—Collision between motor vehicles—No direct evidence of negligence—Matter of inference from proved facts—Sufficiency of facts to support inference. Practice—Direction to jury—Inference of negligence open on proved circumstances—Whether inference should be drawn—Defendant able to explain facts from &hich inference sought to be drawn—Failure of defendant to give evidence—What reliance to be placed by jury on such failure in deciding whether or not to draw inference—Nature of direction to jury. Practice—Non-suit—Verdict by direction—History—Application in New South Wales.

Decisions

March 3, 1959.
The following written judgments were delivered:-
DIXON C.J. In my opinion the evidence adduced for the plaintiff at the trial of this action was insufficient to enable the jury, had they chosen to do so, to find the facts necessary to support the cause of action upon which she sued. No evidence was called on the part of the defendants but, as I think, they were entitled to a verdict by direction. (at p302)

2. The cause of action was negligence causing the death of the plaintiff's husband and the action was brought under the Compensation to Relatives Act 1897-1946 (N.S.W.). The deceased was killed on 15th January 1953 on the Hume Highway at a place called Little Hanging Rock about twelve miles south of Berrima. He was driving an International truck northwards towards Sydney. He was alone in the truck. It was after dark, it had been raining and the road was wet. The road wound up through wooded hills. At the material point the gradient was about one in twelve. In the vicinity of a curve turning west, that is to say to the left of the deceased as he had been travelling, his truck was found at a standstill at the side of the road with the deceased dead or dying. His body was pitched over from the driver's seat to the left of the cabin with his right leg caught between the steering column and the front of the cabin which had been crushed in on the off-side. The near-side was against the bank of the low cutting forming the inside of the curve of the road. The vehicle was at an angle with the direction of the road, the front wheels being on the earthen shoulder and the back wheels, or at all events the off-back wheel, being on the bitumen. Twenty paces to the rear of the truck and facing in the same direction was a diesel truck. It stood on the same side of the road more or less on the earthen shoulder but not at an angle with the direction of the road. The diesel truck had been driven by the defendant Hegedus, an employee of the defendant Dunkel. Hegedus was not killed but he was hurt. He had been travelling in the opposite direction. The vehicles were discovered in the position described by the driver of a motor vehicle…