State v. Miller

Marbury, C. J., delivered the opinion of the Court. On April 5, 1949, Light Street, between Barre and Conway Streets, in the City of Baltimore, was a street 60 or 65 feet wide, running in a northerly and southerly direction. In the center were electric light poles. On the east were piers and wharves of the Baltimore Steam Packet Company, known as Pier 10.

The passenger entrance to Pier 10 was about 50 or 60 feet south of Barre Street. There were no sidewalks on the east side of Light Street paralleling Pier 10. There were no white lines or other marks of a crosswalk at the intersection of Barre and Light Streets. About 50 feet south of the passenger stairway leading into Pier 10, there were markings in the street in front of Pier 16, ⁵²³ and at Light and Conway, which was about a city block from the stairway at Pier 10, there was a marked crosswalk.

The passenger entrance to the pier was about 12 to 14 feet wide, and, opposite this entrance, and in the middle of the northbound streetcar tracks, were six or seven little pieces of metal, like a row of buttons, crossing the northbound track, at the place where the cars used to stop when they were running on Light Street. At 7:45 in the morning of April 5, a bus of the Baltimore Transit Company was stopped opposite the entrance to Pier 10, loading and discharging passengers. The bus driver heard a tractor-trailer on his left stop suddenly. He looked up, and saw a man lying in the street.

The driver of the tractor-trailer said that this man ran into the side of his vehicle. A police officer came from Pier 10 and found the man, who was George Block, lying in front of the stairway in the middle of the car tracks. He said he was in “the unmarked cross-way” in front of the passenger stairway leading to the ticket office on Pier 10. He said this unmarked crosswalk was used daily or frequently for passengers to go back and forth across the street to get to the streetcar or bus, or to sail on the boat.

Traffic was always heavy there in the morning, and the officer testifying was detailed there to direct it every afternoon from 4 to 6. The place where the deceased was found was about three-quarters of the way over the northbound lane, and about 10 or 20 feet north from the bus, and about three feet to the left of it. He was lying, when first seen, at the rear wheels of the tractor, or behind the tractor by the trailer. It was testified, by both the bus driver and the officer, that when the bus would stop by the pier, all other traffic would customarily move by it on the left.

At times, when traffic was heavy, an officer would direct it, but at this particular time, an officer was not directing traffic. Suits were brought by the widow and children and the administratrix of the deceased against the driver and ⁵²⁴ owner of the tractor-trailer. These suits were tried together in the Baltimore City Court, and, at the conclusion of the plaintiffs’ case, the court granted prayers offered by the defendants, directing verdicts in their favor because of a lack of legally sufficient evidence against them. In giving its reasons for this act, the trial court said: “* * * I have ruled the way I did because there is no evidence of any negligence on the part of the driver of the tractor-trailer; we have no witnesses who can tell us how the accident happened; there is no evidence of negligence in the operation of the truck or excessive speed * * The appellants appeal here from the judgments rendered on these verdicts.

Their chief contention is based upon the facts that the stairway of Pier 10 was prominently marked “Entrance”, no vehicles were parked in front of it, the bus was standing at this entrance, and out in the northbound lane, between the car tracks, where the tractor-trailer passed the standing bus, there were a number of metal plates fixed to the surface of the highway. From these circumstances, appellants contend that there was a crossway or street crossing over which pedestrians would have the right of way, that the deceased was in this street crossing, and, therefore, the fact that he was there struck by the tractor-trailer is' sufficient proof of negligence, on the part of the driver of the latter to permit the case to go to the jury. We assume, for the purpose of passing on this