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SUPREME COURT OF LOUISIANA
No. 96-C-1690
Consolidated with
No.96-C-1720

MR. AND MRS. MICHAEL SHEPHARD, ON BEHALF OF THEIR
DECEASED MINOR CHILD, MATTHEW E. SHEPHARD

versus


ALFRED L. SCHEELER, et al.

********************
ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE
COURT OF APPEAL, FOURTH CIRCUIT,
PARISH OF ST. BERNARD
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Jeannette Theriot Knoll
ASSOCIATE JUSTICE

Lemmon, J., not on panel. Rule IV, Part 2, Sec.3.

This action arises out of a fatal accident that occurred on July 6, 1987, on

Louisiana Highway 39 (Judge Perez Drive) in St. Bernard Parish. We granted a writ of review to determine whether a proper allocation of fault had been made below.  For reasons which follow, we conclude the proper allocation of fault to be 80% Scheeler, 20% St. Bernard Parish Police Jury.
On July 6, 1987, Alfred Scheeler, then sixteen, went for an after school drive in his mother's 1978 Ford F-150 pickup truck.  Although a hard rain was falling, Scheeler planned to drive from his home in Meraux to his old house, which had burned down, in Plaquemines Parish. Scheeler was accompanied by two friends, Brandon Lamarque and Matthew Shephard.  As the boys headed south along the river, the rain intensified and the truck ran off the road onto the levee.  Scheeler claims that this initial incident, which knocked the muffler from the pickup, was caused by an eighteen wheeler that forced him from the roadway.
It took several minutes for Scheeler to reattach the muffler to the pickup.  The boys then decided to return home rather than continue onward in the driving rain.  The fact that Shephard had an impending dentist's appointment may have been a factor in their decision.
The intensity of the rain began to decrease as Scheeler drove the pickup toward Meraux along the Judge Perez Drive extension, a four lane highway with a wide median and improved shoulders.  This extension of Judge Perez Drive had been open for only six years at the time.  It was sprinkling as Scheeler negotiated a gradual right to left curve in the roadway.  The curve was "super elevated" or banked, with the right lane higher than the left.
Near the end of the curve, Scheeler lost control of his vehicle and the pickup went into a clockwise spin.  The pickup spun an unknown number of revolutions over
a distance of two hundred feet before striking a St. Bernard Parish dump truck which

was stopped partially on the shoulder.  At impact, the driver

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