Sillik v. Hoeck

⁶⁴⁰ Bond, C. J., delivered the opinion of the Court. As the plaintiff, now appellee, was rounding the front of a street car to board it, she was injured by collision with a passing motor truck; and from a judgment recovered by her against the owner and the driver of the truck, the defendants have appealed. The questions are whether the evidence was legally sufficient to support the jury’s finding of negligence on the part of the truck driver, and whether it requires a ruling that the plaintiff herself contributed to bring about the accident by negligence on her own part, in walking into the truck as it confronted her. Prayers for direction of a verdict for the defendants on these grounds were refused, and the exceptions taken are to the refusal.

There is no material conflict in the evidence. The witnesses on both sides appear to have testified with complete honesty. The plaintiff came hurriedly from the east on Chestnut Hill Avenue in Baltimore City to board a car south on Greenmount Avenue. As well as she could recall, she approached Greenmount Avenue on the north side of Chestnut Hill Avenue, as was her habit, but all other witnesses said she crossed diagonally from the southeast corner.

Chestnut Hill Avenue does not extend west beyond Greenmount Avenue, but the street cars regularly stop for passengers on the west side, a pole standing there being marked by a white band to indicate a stopping place. When the plaintiff came in sight of the car, and the motorman saw her, the car was about a hundréd feet to the north, approaching slowly. There were automobiles coming behind it, and the driver of the truck was then in a narrow width of street beside the car, to the right of it, and even with it, making an effort to pass. As the car had its speed reduced for the stop, the truck passed ahead, and at the moment when the car came to a full stop had at least its front and driver’s cab clear beyond the car.

The plaintiff’s witnesses estimated that the full length of the truck was then beyond the front of the car. The plaintiff, knowing that the car would stop for her, assumed as she went across that there would be ⁶⁴¹ no motor vehicles in her way, kept her eyes on the street car alone, did not see the truck at all, and, after hesitating at the east side of the track until the car stopped nine or ten feet to her right, stepped forward to pass around it and came in contact with a stanchion on the side of the truck, somewhere in the rear of the driver’s cab. The driver, having seen no passengers waiting on the west side ahead of him, had made no allowance for the possible coming of a passenger across the front of the car, but when he saw the