Merchants' Delivery Co. v. Knoche

Urner, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. The appellee sued to recover the cost of repairing damage to his motor truck, caused by collision with one owned by the appellant. On this appeal from a judgment, on verdict, for $600, in favor of the plaintiff, the only question for decision is whether the trial court’s refusal to withdraw the case from the jury was correct. As the heavy truck of the appellee was being turned to the left into a road called Rosebank Avenue from the highway ⁶⁸⁵ known as the North Point Road, on which it had been proceeding southwardly, it was struck on the right side by the appellant’s lighter truck coming in a northerly direction.

It was testified by the driver of the appellee’s truck that, when he started to make the turn into the connecting road, there was no other vehicle in sight on the thoroughfare he was leaving, along which he had a clear vision for two hundred feet towards the south, his view being restricted to that distance by a curve, and that, when the front of the truck in his charge had passed about five feet beyond the eastern concrete shoulder of the North Point Road, and was in the entrance of Rosebank Avenue, which ended there, he saw for the first time the appellant’s truck as it came at high speed from the south, and that he then had no opportunity to escape the collision. The driver of the appellant’s truck gave a different description of the accident. According to his testimony, the appellee’s truck was turned suddenly to the left in front of him when he was so close that he could not prevent the impact. If, in fact, the appellant’s truck had not come into sight around the curve to the south when the appellee’s truck began its leftward turn to enter Rosebank Avenue, then there was no sufficient ground for charging its driver with contributory negligence, and there was a reasonable basis for an inference that the appellant’s driver was negligent in continuing his rapid progress in disregard of the turning movement, which must have become noticeable by him before the danger of collision became imminent.

Taxicab Co. v. Ottenritter, 151 Md. 525 , 135 A. 587 ; Friedman v. Hendler Co., 158 Md. 131 , 148 A. 426 ; Jackson v. Leach, 160 Md. 139 , 152 A. 813 ; Jersey Ice Cream Co. v. Bach, 161 Md. 285 , 157 A. 277 . It is not disputed that ordinarily such a conflict of evidence as we have referred to would present an issue which should be submitted to the jury for