Coates v. Chinn

• Decision Date: 12 December 1958
• Citation: 332 P.2d 289,51 Cal.2d 304
• Court: California Supreme Court
• Parties: Marjorie COATES et al., Appellants, v. Jessie Robson CHINN et al., Respondents. Sac. 7002

Page 289

332 P.2d 289

51 Cal.2d 304

Marjorie COATES et al., Appellants, v. Jessie Robson CHINN et al., Respondents.

Sac. 7002.

Supreme Court of California

Dec. 12, 1958.

Laura O. Coffield, Napa, Charles R. Garry, Francis J. McTernan, and Garry, Dreyfus, McTernan & Keller, San Francisco, for appellants.

Taft, Wright & Hopkins and Cranson L. Hopkins, Vallejo, for respondents.

SPENCE, Justice.

Plaintiffs are the widow and minor child of Kenneth Coates, who was killed when his automobile struck a large limb which had fallen from a eucalyptus tree onto the highway. The tree was part of a row of eucalyptus trees growing on the property of defendants. At the conclusion of plaintiffs' evidence, a motion for nonsuit was granted. Plaintiffs appeal from the judgment accordingly entered.

Plaintiffs based their complaint on two theories: (1) nuisance, because the limb from defendants' eucalyptus tree unlawfully obstructed the highway (Civ.Code, § 3479; Pen.Code, § 370); and (2) negligence, because defendants permitted the limb to extend over the highway without taking reasonable precautions to guard against its falling.

In determining whether the granting of the nonsuit was proper, the appellate court must resolve every conflict in the testimony in favor of plaintiffs, consider every inference which can reasonbly be drawn and every presumption which can fairly be deemed to arise in support of plaintiffs, and accept as true all evidence adduced, direct and indirect, which tends to sustain plaintiffs' case. Lashley v. Koerber, M.D., 26 Cal.2d 83, 84-85, 156 P.2d 441; Wickoff v. James, 159 Cal.App.2d 664, 324 P.2d 661. Relying upon this rule, plaintiffs properly maintain that they were entitled to have their case submitted to the jury, and that the judgment entered upon granting the nonsuit must be reversed.

The accident occurred on the highway near Oakville, Napa County, on November 14, 1954, at about 6:30 p.m. It was dark and it had been raining. Decedent was driving between 45 and 50 miles an hour. Mrs. Coates was sitting in the front seat beside the deceased, and their son was in the rear seat. According to Mrs. Coates, the end of a broken limb six to eight inches in diameter suddenly loomed up in front of the car, and there was no way of avoiding it. The jagged end of the limb came through the windshield, killing the deceased and seriously injuring Mrs. Coates.

Plaintiffs first argue that the maintenance of the row of eucalyptus trees along the edge of the highway in the manner shown by the evidence constituted an obstruction and created a nuisance (Civ.Code, § 3479; Pen.Code, § 370), so that defendants became insurers against accident of persons properly traveling along the highway. They cite cases where the street obstruction was deemed 'per se a wrongful encroachment' (Curtis v. Kastner, 220 Cal. 185, 188, 30 P.2d 26, 28) and constituted a nuisance, imposing absolute liability, irrespective of negligence in its creation or maintenance. Elm v. McKee, 139 Cal.App.2d 353, 293 P.2d 827. The obstructions in the cited cases arose from the intentional invasion of the plaintiffs' interests. See also Stockton Automobile Co. v. Confer, 154 Cal. 402, 97 P. 881. But here there was no such intentional act, for so long as the trees and their limbs remained in place alongside of the road, they did not constitute an obstruction to free travel thereon; and it was only the fallinig of the limb that created the obstruction. Defendants' liability was therefore no absolute and it can be predicated only upon a showing of negligence. As stated in Prosser on Torts (2nd ed. 1955), page 392: 'a nuisance may also result from conduct which is merely negligent, where there is no intent to interfere in any way with the plaintiff, but merely a failure to take precautions against a risk apparent to a reasonable man.' Accordingly the merits of plaintiffs' appeal must be determined in relation to the reasonableness of defendants' conduct under all the circumstances. Calder v. City and County of San Francisco, 50 Cal.App.2d 837, 840, 123 P.2d 897.

A long recognized 'test for determining the issue of negligence is whether a person of ordinary prudence should have foreseen or anticipated that someone might be injured by his action or nonaction.' Mosley v. Arden Farms Co., 26 Cal.2d 213, 216, 157 P.2d 372, 374, 158 A.L.R. 872. Or, as sometimes stated: 'Negligent conduct may be either: (a) an act which the actor as a reasonable man should realize as involving an unreasonable risk of causing an invasion of an interest of another; or, (b) a failure to do an act which is necessary for the protection or assistance of another and which the actor is under a duty to do.' (Restatiment, Torts, § 284.)

The eucalyptus trees planted alongside the highway constituted 'a nonnatural or artificial condition' created on...