Williams v. State Ex Rel. Ellis

Sloan, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. There is only one question in this case, but, as that is to the legal sufficiency of the evidence to support the verdict, and as the evidence tending to prove the negligence of the defendant and its causal connection with the death of plaintiff’s decedent is wholly circumstantial, it is necessary to review all the facts with some particularity. James P. Drury resided, with two daughters, on a small farm situate on the north side of the state road in St. Mary’s County, a little less than half a mile from Mechanicsville. On the evening of January 3rd, 1929, he was at Mechanics-ville.

Wilson Fairall testified that he saw him there about 7 o’clock and talked to him. “After that time I seen him when he went on up the road. He lived a little less than half a ⁴¹ mile up the road, north of Mechanicsville, in the direction of Charlotte Hall. I saw him just as he started up the road; it was then between seven-thirty and eight o’clock. A colored boy was with him. * * * I would say he is crazy (it was stated at the argument that the colored boy was an idiot and could not be used as a witness), and he was in company with Mr. Drury when I saw him going up the road, that was between seven-thirty and eight o’clock.” He testified then to finding a man lying off the north side of the state road about twenty feet from the road into the Drury home.

This was between 8 and 8.30. He did not recognize him, and went back to Mechanicsville for help. He went to Hobert S. Burroughs, a justice of the peace, and they, with Stanley Williams, a nephew of Mr. Drury, went to the scene of the accident. It was then that Mr. Drury was recognized, first by his nephew.

Mr. Drury was lying seven or eight feet to the right of the east edge of the concrete part of the road, and between twenty or twenty-one feet south of the road leading into his home. Dr. Johnson, the physician who was sent for by Squire Burroughs, said Mr. Drury had been removed to his home when he arrived and found him unconscious, and he so continued until he died on January 4th. He found the skull fractured near the crown. He did not recall “any other wound on the body, nothing serious.” “The cut on the scalp was '* * * about three inches across, * * * but the depression in the skull whore the bones were fractured did not seem to be over about one inch, as if the centre of the blow, the force of the blow, had been at one particular spot, and the bone was depressed, as I recall, about one-eighth of an inch, the bone was pressed into the brain * * * I think there were several smaller clean cut wounds like glass, or something like that.

There were some cuts there as if 'it was made by glass, I did not find any glass. I do not know how it was cut, just some clean cuts, a cut that might have been produced by a glass or some other cutting surface. There was not any glass found when I examined the wound and dressed it. The main cut was not with glass, but some other light cuts, I think, were.” ⁴² Robert S. Burroughs testified that he found a man who was moaning at the place where Mr. Fairall took him and Stanley Williams, who recognized the man as his uncle. “When I found him in company with Mr. Eairall and Stanley Williams, he was on the right of the road going from Mechanicsville to Charlotte Hall, below Mr. Drury’s gate, towards Mechanicsville.

His body was off the road. * * * We went back the next morning and there was only one puddle of blood where his head was lying.” The distances from the state road and the way into Drury’s were measured the morning of the trial by Eairall in witness’ presence. Witness heard that a car with a broken windshield had passed through the village, found the car, and that it belonged to Matthew Williams, the defendant appellant. “Saw Mr. Matthew Williams and asked him how his windshield got broken and he said that going home that night some one threw a brick or something in his windshield and broke it out. I asked him where it happened and he said up there next to the canning factory, close to Mr. Drury’s gate, just above Mr. Drury’s gate. So I asked him if he would mind driving up with me and show me the point where it happened. * * * I kept on driving and told him to tell me where to stop and we passed Mr. Drury’s gate and we got to a point where there was a lot of glass and he told me to stop; he said that is where it happened. * * * I asked him how can you account for this glass falling all the way back ?

So he followed me as far back as the glass went, which went back to where Mr. Drury was found. Well, he supposed that must have happened down there and that is where he stopped. * * *We did not find broken glass at the point where I found Mr. Drury’s body the night before. We found it the following morning. . We followed it along to that point.

When Mr. Matthew Williams, the defendant, accompanied me up the road to show me where ha thought he had been struck by a brick, at first I went by the point where Mr. Drury’s body was found (the witness was driving). I would say twenty-five yards above Mr. Drury’s gate there was glass there. Then I followed the glass back and found scattering glass at ⁴³ the point where Mr. Drury was found.” On cross-examination, he said: “There was glass along the road between that and the point opposite where Mr. Drury’s body was found. There was no glass off the road where Mr. Drury’s body was found.

The glass followed on back from where Mr. Williams stopped his car, back about to where Mr. Drury was found, on the right hand side coming up.” “I would not like to say just what he told me as to the exact time when he went along there, but what he told me corresponded with around eight o’clock.” Stanley Williams, the first to identify Mr. Drury, who was his uncle, examined the Ford coupé of the appellant at Mechanicsville on January 4th, and said: “I found the windshield was broken out, a -little over half of it was broken out, a little piece on the left and the right hand front headlight was bent back. There were two or three little pieces on the right hand side of the car, the glass was sticking in there, there were two or three hairs in there. I could see those hairs very clearly. They were kind of a red like, sandy red like, almost the same color as mine.

The blood was on the right hand side of the car where the windshield was broken out, right in the corner of it, two or three little pieces sticking up in the iranio of the windshield. I knew Mr. James B. Drury; he was my uncle. His hair was a light color like, sandy color, almost the same color as mine. It was found right on the little piece of glass sticking up in the frame of the windshield.” Burwood Buckler, who lived about a mile and a half north of Mechanicsville, said he and his wife were on the state road leading south from their home in the direction of Mechanicsville, on their way to Mrs. Buckler’s mother’s, and said: “I came along that road between Drury’s lane and Mechanicsville around seven-thirty or quarter of eight * * * going south.

I met an automobile between the lane leading into Drury’s house and Mechanicsville. I could not say what kind of automobile it was. I met it between Mr. Drury’s gate and the turn at Mr. Charley Herbert’s where you turn down into Mechanicsville. Before I met that automobile I ⁴⁴ met two walkers on the opposite side of the road from where I was.

I was going south on the right hand side and they were going north on their right. They were walking on the shoulder of the road, one behind the other. A very short distance after I passed the two men, * * * maybe sixty feet before I met this car after passing those men, those walkers.” The witness was here interrupted by the question: “Was there anything about the appearance of those men walking down the road and the approach of the other car that attracted your attention?” to which he answered: “The two men were walking down the road and I was going down on my right and this car was going behind the men and I said to my wife, I said, ‘That car is running close on those men.’ ” An objection to the question was overruled and exception taken, not argued or presented on appeal, and no motion appears in the record to strike out any part of the answer, though it is apparent that the remark to the wife was interrupted. “I met the car just after I met the men, that was around seven-thirty or eight o’clock, somewhere between that. The place where Mr. Drury’s body was found has been pointed out roughly but nobody has taken me there and showed me just where he was, but in passing the road they would say that is where he was found.

I met the car around about seventy-five yards below Mr. Drury’s gate; in fact, I met the walkers first and I met- the car I imagine about seventy-five yards south of his gate in the direction of Mechanicsville.” He did not know whose car he passed nor the kind of car, and could not tell who the walkers were. -Did not remember meeting any other car. The “walkers” walked one behind the other on the shoulder of the road. Jane Roberta Drury, nineteen-year-old daughter of James Drury, testified: That she was a student at the Mechanics-ville High School, was at her home the night her father was injured, and was sitting at a table studying her lessons. The honse is “maybe a hundred yards from the state road.

I heard a crash and I got up to the window and looked. My cousin was with me. I saw a car out there, and I saw a man get out of the car and go around in front of it and then ⁴⁵ come back, I saw a man walking up the road afterwards, I don’t know who he was. It looked like a man was walking up the road.

The car that I saw stop after the crash was out-in front of oar house. I could not tell you whether it had gotten below the line of the lane that leads into our house. The night was not so dark. The lights on the car enabled me to see this man get out.

As far as I could see, he went in front of his car and then came hack and went on up the road (north) towards Hughesville. The ear was coming from, the direction of Meehanicsville. After I heard the crash I did not jump right up then, but after I heard it a little while, I said to my cousin, somebody must have had an accident, and got up and went to the window and looked and I saw this car out there. I could tell it was a Ford coupe, ho other car passed while that car was parked there and a man got out and walked around there.” She was then asked to say how her father was dressed. “He had on khaki.” “Ho had on khaki pants when he left home and his overcoat.” “'They were new ones he had just gotten.” When the trousers were removed the night of the accident, they were “cut in back on the leg.” On cross-examination she said: “I could not tell you where that car was in reference to our house, whether it was below the gato or above it, but I know it was not away down below the gate, but it seemed like to' mo it was above the gate this way but not much, or even with it. * * * I saw this man get out and walk around the car, I did hear him holler once because I bad the window up and I only heard, the only voice I heard was once and then when I saw this man walking up the road I thought he was hollering to this man that was walking up the road.

I saw him walk around the car and heard him call.” Robert S. Burroughs, recalled, said that Mr. Drury, when he found him, had on khaki trousers, which, when he took them off, were tom in the back, and that he knew they were not torn from the time he picked him up and helped carry him to his home. ⁴⁶ Matthew Williams, the appellant, testified: That he worked and lived at Meehanicsville. On the night of January 3rd, .1929, he left Meehanicsville about 7.30 o’clock and went on the state road to the home of his mother, who lived two miles north in the direction of Charlotte Hall. He knew where Drury’s gate was located. He was driving a Eord coupé “traveling about twenty miles an hour, not over that, was sure he was not going thirty miles an hour.” He said: “I passed a car between the turn and his gate, at least I met a car; I did not pass it.

That car was going south toward Mechanicsville. I met it between the turn and Drury’s gate. The turn is more than a hundred yards, I guess, below Drury’s gate. I have not measured it.

Q. After you passed that car did you see anything or was there any obstacle in your way at all? A. Ho, sir. I did not see anything at all. Q. Did you have an opportunity to see anything after you passed the car ?

A. Sure; after I passed the car the car had not any more than got by me before the crash came. Q. Just tell the jury what happened. A. Well, I was going up the-road, I was going home and just after I met this car the terrible crash came in the windshield. I did not know what it was all about so I stopped as soon as I could and got the glass off me and I got out and looked around and started back down the road; about ten or fifteen feet back of the car I looked around and I called ‘Hey.’ Hobody answered me and I could not see anything at all, so I went on back and got in the car and went home.

I did not- know what broke the windshield. Q. Did you have any idea what broke it ? A. I thought maybe somebody threw something in there or an ■owl or something flew against the windshield and broke it. I did not see anything in front of .me before the crash.” When he called nobody answered.

When he arrived at his mother’s he examined the car; saw that the windshield was broken. There was nothing else wrong with it. “I did not find any hair or blood1 or nothing on the car. There was ■absolutely none. There were two small dents three inches apart in the windshield frame,” which were not there before ⁴⁷ the accident.

The right lamp was slightly tilted before and the evidence was that its position had not changed. The morning after the accident Squire .Burroughs went with the appellant in the latter’s car, the one involved, to the scene of the accident, the appellant testifying: “He told me to stop where I thought the crash was and he drove on up the road until I told him to stop, about where I stopped to' get the glass out of the car off me. I stopped where I saw some glass. I did not know as a matter of fact just where the crash took place.

It was dark at night, I could not tell just where. It was somewhere above his gate. I could not tell where it came. When Mr. Burroughs told me where the body was, I told him the crash came up the road there just above his gate.

I thought it was farther up. As a matter of fact, I did not know exactly just where the crash did come.” “It could not have been over fifty or sixty feet” beyond the point where he passed a car coming from the other direction until the crash came. “I could see the road plain, there was nothing in the road at all,” and that he “overtook nothing”; did not see anything between the passing of the ear and the crash; did not see anyone walking in the road; did not see them just before meeting the other car; “did not see them then even.” The paved portion of the road, including the two-foot concrete shoulders, was eighteen feet wide, and the road was in the vicinity of the accident. On cross-examination the appellant said: He had “just passed the (other) car” when the crash came; “the car had just gotten by me. Q. It had just gotten by you ?

A. Well, it had gone, the rear of the lights had got past me, the car was past me when the crash came. Q. How is that ? A. I said the car had passed me when the crash came; the lights of the car had gone, behind me. I could see the road clear enough.

Q. When you met this car just before this crash came were you blinded at all by the lights of that car? A. When I met the car, yes. I could see the road plain when I was meeting the car. As soon as I got right to the car of course the lights kind of blind you.

Q. When you got right close to the car the lights.did blind you? A. Bight at the ⁴⁸ car. Q. Then you could not detect whether anybody was in front of the car ? A. I could see the road.” He was satisfied he could have seen him if there had been anybody in the road.

He brushed the glass off the seat at the place he stopped the car and got out. Could not say how far it was back to the point where last glass was found. Mr. I’airall, in presence of Squire Burroughs, measured it at twenty feet south of road into Drury’s. The witness said he went about sixty feet from the point of the crash until the car came to a stop.

He knew where the lane led into Drury’s, but did not know whether the crash came before or after he passed it. Did not blow his horn because “there was nothing to blow the horn at.” When the windshield was broken, nothing fell inside the car except broken glass. Robert Williams, the only witness called by the appellant,