Caldbeck v. Flint

• Decision Date: 05 January 1933
• Citation: 183 N.E. 739,281 Mass. 360
• Parties: CALDBECK v. FLINT.
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court

281 Mass. 360

183 N.E. 739

CALDBECK

v.FLINT.

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Worcester.

Jan. 5, 1933.

Exceptions from Superior Court, Worcester County; Pinanski, Judge.

Action by John Caldbeck against Hobart S. Flint. Verdict in favor of plaintiff, and defendant brings exceptions.

Exceptions overruled.

H. E. Manning, of Worcester, for plaintiff.

A. Donahue, of Boston, for defendant.

DONAHUE, J.

The plaintiff was injured while riding as a guest in an automobile owned and driven by the defendant which was proceeding easterly on Main Street in Spencer about three-quarters of a mile easterly of the center of the town. Although there was conflicting evidence the jury might have found the facts to be as herein recited. They had been coming up a long steep hill and some distance back from the top the automobile had gone from the right side of the macadam road on to the left several times, but when the plaintiff spoke to the defendant about it the latter straightened out the automobile and it continued on the right of the center of the roadway. Near the top of the hill a street intersected Main Street from the right and about twenty-five feet to the east of that intersection there was a beacon light in the center of the roadway consisting of a cement base three feet in diameter and two or three feet high; on this was a metal cap supporting a structure which had a panel of glass on each of its four sides. Darkness had come and street lights along the road were lighted, one of them being ten or fifteen feet on the Spencer side of the beacon. The beacon light was illuminated from its top to its base, there was a space of ten feet free for passage between the concrete base of the light and the right edge of the macadam, there was nothing in the condition of the surface of the highway and no traffic in the vicinity which required the defendant's automobile to leave the right side of the road, yet he drove his automobile at the beacon at the rate of twenty-fives miles an hour demolishing the upper structure. The automobile came to a rest with its front axle resting upon the concrete base. There was evidence from which the jury was warranted in finding that the defendant was at the time under the influence of liquor.

We cannot say as matter of law that the evidence did not warrant the conclusion by the jury that the defendant's conduct in the operation of his automobile in the critical seconds just preceding the collision was not only lacking in ordinary care but amounted to such utter lack of concern for the safety of himself and of his guest as to amount to gross negligence. Whether the defendant was looking ahead as he should have been and, as the jury might have found, inexcusably ran into the beacon light or whether, unmindful of the obligation the law put upon him, he diverted his attention from the road and thus failed to see what was so manifest, the jury would have warrant for finding him grossly negligent. McCarron v. Bolduc, 270 Mass. 39, 169 N. E. 559; Meeney v. Doyle, 276 Mass. 218, 177 N. E. 6;Blood v. Adams, 269 Mass. 480, 169 N. E. 412. If the jury found that he was under the influence of liquor that fact might properly have been taken into account by it on the issue of the degree of his negligence. Learned v....