Nadine Jones v. Albert Fritz

On this appeal, defendant seeks reversal of a judgment in the sum of $10,000 for personal injuries sustained by plaintiff
as the result of a vehicular collision at the intersection of Ninth and Cleveland Streets in Monett, Missouri, on October
27, 1958. Plaintiff submitted her case upon defendant's alleged negligence in failing to stop before entering the intersection
(in violation of a city ordinance) and in failing to yield the right of way. The sole issue here is whether plaintiff was
contributorily negligent as a matter of law. Ninth is a north-and-south street about thirty feet in width with a blacktop surface from curb to curb. Cleveland is an east-and-west
street with a two-lane blacktop roadway (about twenty feet in width) in the center of the street and an unpaved strip (about
ten feet in width) on each side of the blacktop. For more than five years prior to the collision under consideration, the
intersection of Ninth and Cleveland had been "a four-way stop," established as such by a city ordinance (received in evidence)
which required all vehicles to stop before entering the intersection and provided for erection of a stop sign on each corner.
At the time of accident, this intersection was protected by such signs, each of which was lettered "4 WAY STOP," and by a
blinking light, flashing red in all directions, suspended over the center of the intersection. Both plaintiff and defendant
were familiar with the intersection. Plaintiff, then thirty-nine years of age, a housewife, the mother of two boys, and a
part-time bookkeeper at the local radio station in Monett, was traveling east on Cleveland in a 1956 Ford tudor en route from
her home to a local cold storage warehouse to get some apples for the evening meal. Defendant, then sixty-four years of age,
a farmer and livestock hauler, was traveling north on Ninth in a 1955 Chevrolet automobile en route from the Parakeet Beer
Tavern in Monett (where, so his story ran, he had, although "tired, wore out, not feeling good," visited with a neighbor for
"something like" one hour and forty minutes during which he ordered the familiar two short beers but left half of the second
one) to his farm home some three and one-quarter miles north of the city. It was still daylight, shortly after 5:00 P.M.