United Railways & Electric Co. v. State Ex Rel. Lapka

Offutt, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. This is an action brought for the use of the widow and infant children of Theodore J. Lapka, to recover compensation for his death, which, the equitable plaintiffs contend, resulted, from a collision between an automobile in which he was a passenger and a street car operated by the United Railways & Electric Company of Baltimore, the defendant, which occurred at the intersection of East Avenue and Elliott Street in Baltimore City on Eebruary 14th, 1931, shortly after 2 o’clock in the morning. The trial of the case in the Baltimore City Court resulted in a verdict and judgment for the plaintiff, and from that judgment the defendant has taken this appeal, which presents two questions: (1) Whether the trial court erred in refusing to direct a verdict for the defendant; and (2) whether it ■erred in refusing defendant’s prayers numbered 8 and 8%. The following facts, which appear in the record, are not disputed and may be stated in narrative form: Theodore J. Lapka, with Erank Poston, Charles S. O’Hara, and Leroy E. Eagle, were on Friday, Eebruary 13th, 1931, employed .at the Sparrows Point plant of the Bethlehem Steel Company.

The four were friends, and at the end of the day’s work O’Hara, who owned an automobile, regularly drove Poston and Eagle to their homes and occasionally Lapka. On the evening referred to, they all finished their work a few minutes after 11 o’clock, and while O’Hara was in the locker room preparing to return to his home, Lapka approached and asked if he would take him, that is, Lapka, to his home in O’Hara’s automobile. O’Hara consented, and the four left the plant at about a quarter of 12. The automobile was a ³¹⁷ Olirysler runabout, and O’Hara, wlio drove it, Poston, and Kagle sat in the front seat, and Lapka in the rumble seat at the rear.

On their way into the city they stopped first to have some checks cashed, then at a friend’s to whom Poston wanted to pay some money, and shortly after they left there Poston left the machine, leaving in it O’Hara and Kagle in the front seat and Lapka in the rear or rumble seat. O'Hara, then started to drive to Lapka’s home, which was on Boston Street, and to reach it he drove west on Eastern Avenue to East Avenue, and turned south on East Avenue. As he attempted to cross Elliott Street, which, running east and west, intersects East Avenue, his automobile collided with a westbound street car operated by the defendant, and following the collision went diagonally across the intersection and ran into the front of a grocery store located on its southwest corner. After the accident Lapka was found lying on the sidewalk near the automobile, either dead or suffering from injuries which almost immediately caused his death.

Elliott Street at that point, from building line to building line, is about 70 feet wide. The roadway is about 42 feet % inch wide; the distance from the north curb line to the north rail of the westbound track is 13 feet 4 inches, from that rail to the south rail of the eastbound track 15 feet 4% inches, and from the south rail to the south curb 13 feet 3 inches, and the sidewalks on either side are 13 feet 11 inches wide. The roadway of East Avenue is 41 feet 6 inches wide, and it is bounded on the west side by a sidewalk 14 feet 3 inches wide, and on the east side by a sidewalk 14 feet 2 inches wide. The evidence relating to the actual occurrence of the accident is conflicting, and the opposing theories predicated upon that evidence quite irreconciliable.

The plaintiff contended that it was caused by the conduct of the defendant’s motorman in operating its street car at a high and unlawful rate of speed across an intersecting street, and in failing to take reasonable care to avoid striking O’Hara’s automobile, which was in the lawful use of the intersecting street, after he became aware or should have become aware of O’Hara’s in ³¹⁸ tention of crossing in front of the street car, and that Lapka’s death was caused by the collision. ' The defendant’s theory appears to be: (1) That the direct and proximate cause of the collision was the high speed at which O’Hara operated his automobile; and (2) that Lapka’s death was caused, not by the collision between the street car and the automobile, but by the collision between the automobile and the street curb or the store front, which it says was occasioned by O’Hara’s negligence. There were but two witnesses who actually saw the entire occurrence, O’Hara, and the motorman who operated the defendant’s street car. O’Hara testified: “I was coming down at a moderate rate of speed and as I approached within fifteen or twenty feet of the building line, I looked to my left and decreased my speed and seeing nothing coming I continued on and glanced to my right. As I reached the building line I looked to my left and saw the street car at least a quarter of a block east on Elliott Street and continued on and looking again to my right as my front wheels approached the car track, the north rail of the westbound car track, I looked and saw this street car coming at an awful rate of speed and seeing it would do me no good to' stop1 or I would be right in the middle of the tracks, I increased my speed and pulled to the right in an effort to avoid a collision. “Q. What happened ?

A. The street car hit me on the left rear end and drove me into the store front on the opposite side of the street, southwest comer. Q. Had there been any bell rung or anything by the street car? A. No, sir, no warning whatever. Q. Were your lights burning as you went down there ?

A. Positively. Q. When you say you got to the — got out on the car track or the rail of the westbound car track, north rail, and saw this street car coming, how was it going? A. Very fast. Q. Have you any idea what rate of speed it was going?

A. I couldn’t say the exact mileage, but it was going, I would say, in excess of twenty-five miles an hour.” He further testified that the street car did not stop until it nearly reached the next intersecting street, which is Robin- ³¹⁹ sou; that he felt as though the left front end of the street car struck the automobile ; that the headlight of the street car was burning and that he had no trouble in seeing it; that when he came to the intersection he was driving at about fifteen ndles per hour and could have stopped the automobile before it reached the curb, and after it reached the curb he could have stopped it before it reached the railway tracks. Charles Waterman, the motorman, gave this description of the accident: “I was westbound on Elliott Street Friday, February 13th, 1931, at 2.10 A. M. in the morning; approaching East Avenue I slacked my car down to a speed of about twelve miles an hour and tapped on the gong before I hit the building line of the street. When I hit the building line, I looked to my right. I seen the headlights of this automobile.

Right away I glanced to my left and there was nothing coming, and I released my air brake and started to feed my car up, and I looked back again to my right and saw this automobile about forty or fifty feet away from me, when my car was about centerway from the curb to a few feet, from the center of the curb about midway from the center of the curb to where the accident happened, a little beyond the center of the street is where the accident happened. He was about forty or fifty feet away t-hen. When I seen him and noticed that high speed there was nothing else to do but shut the power off and try to stop the car, and before I was able to control the car in the manner in which I should, the force of the impact struck on the right front corner of my street car and threw me back up into the car to where that iron rod is at the conductor’s fare box and I lost complete control of the car and I could’nt see nothing but like smoke or dust for a few seconds, I will say, and the car had to stop itself; I lost complete control of it. After the car stopped, we ran off the car and we ran over and seen the conductor, he was talking to the man who — • the conductor was talking to the man that drove it, later to be Mr. O’Hara, the driver of the machine. * * * Of course, the controller was laying down on the floor and glass splattered all around and the little door on the left side; the ³²⁰ conductor’s door, the one on the front end was off. * * * I just couldn’t say where the door fell off the car because it seemed like everything fell as the car was going along, just that way, and glass all flew, of course, and it was either smoke or glass or I shut my eyes, I wouldn’t say. * * * I took that car out at one o’clock, that car that I was using, I hadn’t used it the first part of the night.

The car operated O. K. The brakes was O. K. I took it from Druid TTill Park to- the foot of Clinton Street. * * * When you saw this automobile coming down the first time was it near the track or where? A. When I saw him when I approached the building line the automobile was a hundred and fifty to- two hundred feet up the street.” When asked whether the automobile was “going fast at that time,” he replied, “He wouldn’t go- any faster, the speed wouldn’t; he couldn’t go any faster.” He further said that he “noticed the speed” of the automobile when it was forty or fifty feet from him, and that he at that time was about midway between the curb- and the- p-o-int at which the accident happened, which was about three feet beyond the center of the street. That he had increased his speed, but could have stopped the car within ten or twelve feet because he had the “cylinders full of air.” Eagle, who was on the front seat of the automobile with O’Hara, was dozing and knew nothing of the accident until the “crash came” and he “found the automobile against the bo-w window of the store.” Lawrence H. Klaus, the conductor of the street car, said that he- was standing at the second window from the rear of the car and got “a catty cornered glance up- East Avenue” when he saw the automobile sixty or seventy feet up- the street “coming at a terrible rate of speed.” It appeared from the other testimony that the automobile struck the store front with such force that the “bottom of the window, the base, was all knocked out; it had gone right through that”; that the front of the- building was completely demolished, and Lapka was lying with his head against a corner of the wall; that the front windows of the street car were all ³²¹ shattered, the “left front door was hanging” and eventually fell in the street, the controller was knocked off, there was a crack in the air line, and a step1 near the front on the right side of the car was split. It also appeared that the street ear weighed twenty-four tons, and 'Cornelius E. Hearn, chief instructor of the instruction department for motormen and conductors, said that it had a maximum speed of from nineteen to twenty miles per hour and that under favorable conditions when going at ten miles per hour it could he stopped in ninety feet.

There was also in evidence an ordinance of the Oity of Baltimore limiting the speed of street cars at intersections to fifteen miles per hour, and requiring persons operating the same to have them under control, and not to exceed what would be a reasonable and proper speed “in view of the circumstances, surroundings and location.” At the close of the entire ease the plaintiff offered three prayers, which were granted, and the defendant sixteen, all of which, except its prayers for a directed verdict and its 8 and 8% prayers, were granted. The plaintiff’s prayers were the usual stereotyped expressions of the law applicable to such cases. While its first or recovery prayer was too general in its nature to be of much assistance1 to the jury, its omissions were corrected by the defendant’s prayers, and since no objection to any of them was suggested to this court, they need not he discussed. The defendant’s first two demurrer prayers raise the question whether the evidence was legally sufficient to show that it was guilty of primary negligence, and that question will he first considered.

The defendant’s contention rests mainly upon the hypothesis that the testimony of O’Hara is inherently incredible, without probative force, and must be disregarded. It attempts to demonstrate that conclusion by a series of elaborate and ingenious calculations based upon the testimony of O’Hara, Waterman, the motorman, and Klaus, the conductor, as to speed and distance. ³²² But, as a matter of common sense, it is obvious that estimates of speed and distance from observations made under the stress and confusion of a sudden and dangerous emergency must in their very nature be largely conjectural and lack the certainty and precision necessary to give such calculations the final and conclusive effect assumed in that contention. In substance, the testimony of O’Hara was that, when he reached the building line of Elliott Street, he saw the street car approaching from his left a “quarter of a block east.” He at that time was about twenty-seven feet from the north rail of the westbound track, proceeding south towards it at from twelve to fifteen miles per hour. He did not look to his left again until the front wheels of his automobile approached that track, and he then saw the car coming at an “awful rate of speed,” in “excess of twenty-five miles an hour.” He could have stopped his automobile at the rate he was going in about thirteen feet; nevertheless, although he knew of its approach from the time he left the building line) he did not stop until too late to avoid a collision with an onrushing car coming towards him at “an awful rate of speed.” The testimony of the motorman was almost the precise converse of that of O’Hara.

He said that, as he reached the building line of East Avenue, he saw the approaching automobile, then from 150 to 2001 feet away; that he “slacked” his car down to twelve miles an hour, tapped his gong, released his brakes, and started to “feed” his car up; that when he was about half way between the curb and the point of impact (about twelve feet from the curb), he looked again and saw the automobile about forty or fifty feet away approaching at high speed; that he then attempted to stop, but was unable to do so in time to avoid a collision. The speed of the automobile, from his estimate of distance and the speed of the street car, was from forty-five to ninety miles an hour, and under the conditions he could have stopped the street car, which was proceeding at from twelve to fifteen miles an hour, in twelve feet. So that although he knew of its approach he made no effort to stop until it was too late to avoid a collision ³²³ with the automobile, which was approaching, in his judgment, at from forty-five to ninety miles an hour. Appellant contends that that testimony and the other evidence to which reference has been made affords no legally sufficient evidence of primary negligence, and it rests that contention upon the proposition that O’Hara’s statement that, when he reached the north rail of the westbound tracks, the street car was between the building line and the curb, which it is said