Turner v. Schaeffer

By this appeal we are asked, for the first time in this state, to articulate the elements making up willful and wanton misconduct in a situation where the driver goes to sleep at the wheel and injures a guest. The facts are important.

Both plaintiff and defendant are young people. They had been going together for about a year at the time of the accident sued on, which occurred shortly after midnight on Thanksgiving Day, 1958. Defendant, that evening, called for plaintiff around 8:30 at her home in Mineral, Illinois, having driven over from Tampico where he lived — about a fifteen minute drive.…