Bacher v. Higgins

• Decision Date: 10 December 1934
• Docket Number: 14681
• Citation: 157 So. 800
• Court: Court of Appeal of Louisiana — District of US
• Parties: BACHER v. HIGGINS

157 So. 800

BACHER v. HIGGINS

No. 14681

Court of Appeal of Louisiana, Orleans.

December 10, 1934

Alvin R. Christovich and St. Clair Adams, Jr., both of New Orleans for appellant.

Cameron C. McCann, of New Orleans, for appellee.

OPINION

JANVIER Judge.

This is an action ex delicto in which William Bacher claims of Donald Higgins $ 281 for personal injuries and for damage sustained by his Studebaker automobile when that car, driven by Bacher, came into collision with a Ford automobile owned and driven by Donald Higgins.

Higgins denying fault on his part and charging that the proximate cause of the collision was the negligence of Bacher, by reconventional demand claims of Bacher the sum of $ 404.05 for personal injuries and for damage sustained by his Ford automobile.

In the First city court for the city of New Orleans there was judgment dismissing both the main and the reconventional demands; the judge a quo having reached the conclusion that "both the plaintiff as well as the defendant and reconvener were at fault."

Plaintiff Bacher, appealed, and defendant and plaintiff in reconvention answered the appeal. When the matter was first presented to us, we considered only the contention of Bacher that, since Higgins had not himself appealed from the judgment dismissing his reconventional demand, the judgment in so far as it dismissed that demand had become final. We concluded that by answering the appeal defendant had done all that was necessary to authorize us to consider the reconventional demand, and therefore now consider both the claim of plaintiff, Bacher, and the claim of defendant and plaintiff in reconvention, Higgins. See Bacher v. Higgins (La.App.) 156 So. 826.

The collision took place at the corner of Dryades and Robert streets, this city, at a few minutes after 6 o'clock in the morning on December 9, 1932, when it was yet sufficiently dark to require that headlights be used.

Both streets are whet is known as one-way streets; traffic on Dryades street being limited to that proceeding towards the downtown or business section of the city, and vehicles on Robert street being required to proceed only in the direction of the Mississippi river.

The Ford on Dryades street was proceeding down town and the Studebaker on Robert street was going towards the river, so that the Studebaker approached from the left-hand side of the driver of the Ford. Thus, if both arrived at the intersection at approximately the same time, the driver of the Ford was entitled to proceed, because in the governing traffic ordinance of the city of New Orleans, No. 13702, C. C.S., there appears paragraph (a) of section 10 of article VI, which reads as follows: "On all streets, except through streets and boulevards, and at intersections of right-of-way streets with one another, all vehicles approaching intersecting streets from the left shall give right-of-way to vehicles approaching from the right."

Bacher concedes that Higgins was approaching from the favored direction, but he maintains that he himself had already entered the intersection, and had not only preempted it, but had almost completely crossed it, when his car was...