Bess v. Quinn

Per Curiam. Appellant, an infant under three, by her mother as next friend, urges reversal of the trial court’s action in directing a verdict for the driver and owner, respectively, of a taxicab which struck and injured her. It is claimed that the driver was negligent in failing to keep a proper lookout and to sound the horn, and in driving with defective brakes, and the owner was negligent in sending out a cab with defective brakes. Error is claimed in the refusal of the trial court to permit brake experts to answer a hypothetical question to the effect that the brakes were imperfect.

There was no error in rejecting the hypothetical question because it was materially defective in not assuming the truth of material facts and in embodying disputed facts and argument and conclusions. The testimony was that the injured child, Michele, was walking home from Sunday School hand in hand with her sister, Eleanor, in the company of three other sisters and an adult friend of the family, when she suddenly broke loose and ran out between two parked cars into the street, and, in the words of the adult friend from the stand, “a taxicab was com ⁵⁴² ing and he pulled on its brakes and about the length of two cars, and it skidded * * * and he hit Michele * * The taxi driver testified he had operated the cab for several hours before the accident and that it had functioned normally, without evidencing any mechanical difficulties. He was going about twenty to twenty-five miles an hour when he first noticed two children standing still on the sidewalk and then saw Michele’s head between two parked cars and “hit the brake.” His brakes were on when the right front of the cab struck the child. When he first saw her head, he was about two