Edwards v. Warwick
| Decision Date | 01 February 1945 |
| Citation | 59 N.E.2d 194,317 Mass. 573 |
| Parties | ADONIS P. EDWARDS v. EDWARD J. WARWICK (and a companion case [1]). |
| Court | United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court |
December 8, 1944.
Present: FIELD, C.
J., QUA, DOLAN RONAN, & SPALDING, JJ.
Negligence Contributory, Motor vehicle, Use of way, Causing death. Proximate Cause.
A finding of contributory negligence on the part of a plaintiff, operator of an automobile, was not required as matter of law on conflicting evidence from which it could have been found that as the plaintiff was travelling westerly in darkness and mist with his headlights lighted, a dark colored, unlighted automobile operated by the defendant entered the highway from a roadside restaurant located off the south side thereof proceeded across the highway and struck the plaintiff's automobile, and that the plaintiff did not see the defendant's automobile until it was but a few feet away when he was unable to prevent the collision.
Evidence, that an elderly woman died of angina pectoris, "the culmination of" a preexisting "arteriosclerotic heart condition," about ten months after she had suffered a fractured zygoma in an automobile accident, that her general health deteriorated markedly after the accident and that her death was "hastened prematurely by the accident" through acceleration of the heart condition, warranted a finding that the accident was a proximate cause of her death, although there was no evidence to show how much earlier death occurred than it would have, but for the accident.
TWO ACTIONS OF TORT. Writs in the Central District Court of Worcester dated November 17, 1941, and October 5, 1942, respectively.
Upon removal to the Superior Court, the actions were tried before Donnelly, J. There were verdicts for the plaintiffs. The defendant alleged exceptions.
B. C. Tashjian, for the defendant. C. W. Proctor, for the plaintiffs.
The first of these actions, in the order in which both parties have dealt with them, is to recover for injury to the plaintiff's automobile and for medical and hospital expenses incurred in behalf of the plaintiff's wife, all as the result of a collision between an automobile owned and driven by the plaintiff and an automobile driven by the defendant in Oxford on November 15, 1941. The second action is for the death of the plaintiff's testatrix, who was his mother, alleged to have resulted from the same accident. In each action there was a verdict for the plaintiff.
The accident happened on "the Worcester-Oxford highway," which was straight, level, and between thirty and forty feet in width. It was dark and "kind of misty," and "the place of the accident was dark." The plaintiff was driving in a westerly direction toward Oxford. His wife and mother were riding with him. The defendant, who had been travelling in the same direction, had stopped to eat at a roadside restaurant located off the southerly side of the highway, and was returning to the way to resume his journey when the collision occurred.
The only issues argued by the defendant are whether, in the first action, the plaintiff was guilty of contributory negligence as a matter of law, and whether, in the second action, there was any evidence that the death of the plaintiff's testatrix was caused by the accident. We confine ourselves to these issues.
1. The plaintiff testified that about fifty feet from the point of contact he had "gone through a green light" and had then increased his speed to about twenty-five miles an hour; that he first observed the defendant's automobile, which was "dark in color" and "was then travelling without lights," when his own headlights shone on the defendant's hood and fender; that the defendant's automobile was then between nine and ten feet away to the plaintiff's left; that it was "moving straight across the highway"; that the plaintiff "hollered," applied his brakes, and turned to his right; that it was too late to do anything because the defendant was too close; that the right front of the defendant's automobile struck the left front of the plaintiff's automobile; that the defendant "came right across and kind of hit the plaintiff's car on the side," causing the latter to be pushed "some distance"; that when the plaintiff first saw the defendant's automobile, its rear end was "in the middle of the road -- across the road"; and that "the defendant was at a right angle with the road." The defendant testified that before entering the highway he noticed that the traffic signal at his right was "red for west bound traffic"; that he observed the headlights of an automobile about two hundred fifty feet away at his right; that when he stopped at the restaurant his headlights had not been turned on because it was not then dark, but that they were on when he reentered the highway; and that by the time of the collision he had "straightened his car out so that he was nearly parallel with the center of the road."
It seems plain that upon conflicting evidence the jury could find that the accident was caused solely by the defendant's driving his dark colored automobile in darkness and mist without lights from the restaurant across the road in front of and too near to the oncoming automobile of the plaintiff, the lights of which were in plain sight, and that the judge could not rule as matter of law that negligence of the plaintiff was a contributing cause. The failure of the plaintiff to see the defendant's automobile sooner than he did could be referred to its position at one side and at a right angle, as the plaintiff testified, to the plaintiff's course, to the lack of visibility, and to the defendant's headlights not being lighted. The plaintiff would not naturally expect an unlighted vehicle to come upon him from his side across the roadway so near to him as to interfere with his continued regular progress. The...
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