Bullock v. Tamiami Trail Tours, 621.
| Decision Date | 28 May 1958 |
| Docket Number | No. 621.,621. |
| Citation | 162 F. Supp. 203 |
| Parties | Helen H. BULLOCK and Grover C. Bullock, Plaintiffs, v. TAMIAMI TRAIL TOURS, Inc., Defendant. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Northern District of Florida |
Victor M. Cawthon, Tallahassee, Fla., for plaintiffs.
Keen, O'Kelley & Spitz, Tallahassee, Fla., for defendant.
DE VANE, District Judge.
This is a suit brought by plaintiffs who were passengers on one of defendant's busses for damages sustained as the result of an assault upon them by another passenger riding on the same bus. Plaintiffs claim that the assault was inflicted upon them because of the position they occupied in the bus.
The evidence in the case in the main is not in dispute. The evidence shows that plaintiffs are British subjects, residing on the island of Jamaica where they were both born and reared. They are married to each other and are both musicians and teachers. The husband is also a minister of the Church of England. The husband is colored and the wife is white. They were on their first trip to the United States.
Reverend Bullock testified that he knew about segregation having been practiced in the Southern part of the United States, but that he had read in statements in a newspaper published in Kingston, Jamaica, that it had been abolished by a decision of the Supreme Court of the United States and by an order of the Interstate Commerce Commission, that he accepted these statements as true and relied upon them.
Reverend Bullock testified further that he made arrangements at Martin's Travel Agency in Kingston, Jamaica, for transportation for their visit to the United States. They were advised, so he testified, to travel by bus in order to see more of the country-side. Taking this advice, they purchased from the Agency airline tickets to Miami, Florida, and bus tickets from that point to New York by way of Kansas City, Missouri.
Upon boarding defendant's bus at Miami, the Bullocks seated themselves toward the front of the bus on the driver's side. When the bus reached its first stop at Coral Gables, about twenty miles outside of Miami, another passenger complained of the position Reverend Bullock occupied in the bus and the bus driver informed him of the complaint and asked him to move to the rear of the bus. This Reverend Bullock declined to do. Upon his declination the bus driver examined his tickets and announced to the passengers on the bus that he was unable to make Bullock move to the rear of the bus and they retained their seats until the incident that occurred at Perry, Florida, which resulted in this suit, took place.
The bus stopped at Pouncy's Restaurant, customarily used as a bus stop in that town after midnight. It was some time between two and three o'clock a. m. when the bus stopped at the restaurant. The bus driver, along with many of the passengers, went into the restaurant for a cup of coffee and while in there he told another bus driver or someone else of the presence in his bus of the Bullocks occupying seats well up in front of the bus and that they had declined to move to the rear of the bus.
Milton Poppell was in the restaurant at that time and overheard the conversation the bus driver had with the other person. There is some conflict in the evidence as to whether the...
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Bullock v. Tamiami Trail Tours, Inc.
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