This case was a personal injury action arising from a collision between the plaintiff's truck and the defendant's automobile on a Missouri highway. The plaintiff sought damages under the humanitarian doctrine, while the defendant counterclaimed for injuries caused by the plaintiff's negligence. The trial court directed a verdict against the plaintiff on his claim and submitted the counterclaim to a jury, which awarded the defendant $12,000. On appeal, the court affirmed, holding that the evidence did not support a submissible case under the humanitarian doctrine because the plaintiff was never in imminent peril, nor did it show primary negligence by the defendant.
The case concerned whether the Circuit Court of St. Louis had original jurisdiction to hear a widow's lawsuit seeking accidental death benefits from the Police Retirement System of St. Louis after the board of trustees denied her claim. The court held that the 1939 amendment to the retirement act granted the board exclusive original jurisdiction over all benefit claims, limiting circuit court review to common-law certiorari. It further reasoned that Article V, Section 22 of the 1945 Missouri Constitution requires judicial review to assess whether agency decisions are supported by competent and substantial evidence on the whole record, rendering the act's certiorari-only provision inoperative and subjecting reviews instead to the broader standards of the administrative procedure act. The provisional rule in prohibition was made absolute, barring the circuit court from trying the claim anew.
In State v. Harrison, the defendant was convicted of second-degree burglary and larceny and, due to a prior robbery conviction, was sentenced under Missouri's habitual criminal act to the maximum terms of ten and five years, respectively. The defendant did not contest the underlying convictions but argued that the information failed to properly charge him as a habitual offender because it omitted the exact date of his discharge from the prior sentence and did not allege that he had actually been imprisoned. The court held that the information satisfied the statutory requirements by alleging the prior conviction, discharge upon compliance with the sentence, and commission of the new offenses thereafter; it further ruled that the act does not require specific allegations or proof of imprisonment, as discharge by pardon without incarceration is also covered. The court affirmed the judgment, noting that challenges to the instructions were not preserved for review due to the absence of a bill of exceptions or motion for new trial.
This case was a class action by residents of an area annexed to Kansas City by a 1946 charter amendment that was not set to take effect until January 1, 1950. The plaintiffs challenged the validity of a $41 million bond issue approved by city voters in a November 1947 election, arguing they were improperly denied the right to vote and raising various state and federal constitutional claims. The court held that the bond election and resulting obligations were valid, ruling that the plaintiffs were not qualified electors of the city at the time of the vote because the annexation had not yet become effective. The decision rested on the charter's explicit postponement of the effective date, prior precedent in Kansas City v. Reed, and the established principle that newly annexed property becomes subject to existing municipal debt upon annexation.
The case involved a wrongful death claim by Mabel Boehrer against the driver of a car, Peter Schuller, and the Missouri Pacific railroad after her husband was killed when the car, in which he was a passenger, was struck by a train after the driver mistakenly drove onto the railroad right-of-way. The trial court directed verdicts for both defendants at the close of plaintiff's evidence, and the appellate court affirmed. The court reasoned that under Illinois law, the guest statute limited recovery against the driver to cases of willful and wanton misconduct, which the evidence did not show, and that as a trespasser on railroad property, the decedent was owed only a duty by the railroad not to willfully or wantonly injure him, which was also not breached based on the facts presented.
In Mennemeyer v. Hart, parents sued the administrator of their deceased son's estate for the value of lost services from their minor son's death in a car accident caused by the son's negligent driving. The court held that the action could not proceed against the administrator because it was in substance a wrongful death claim rather than a claim for injury to property rights under Section 98, R.S. 1939. The opinion reasoned that wrongful death statutes exclusively governed such claims and did not provide for survival against a deceased wrongdoer's estate at the time of the accident, rejecting an older master-servant theory of parental rights in favor of a modern view based on reciprocal family duties. The court affirmed dismissal of the petition, noting that a later statutory amendment allowing survival did not apply retroactively.