Gangi v. Adley Express Co.

• Decision Date: 03 December 1945
• Citation: 63 N.E.2d 897,318 Mass. 762
• Parties: GANGI et al. v. ADLEY EXPRESS CO., Inc.
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court

318 Mass. 762

63 N.E.2d 897

GANGI et al.

v.ADLEY EXPRESS CO., Inc.

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Middlesex.

Dec. 3, 1945.

Exceptions from Superior Court, Middlesex County; Goldberg, Judge.

Action by Vicenzo Gangi and another against the Adley Express Company, Incorporated, to recover damages sustained by plaintiffs when a truck owned by defendant crashed into plaintiffs' house. Defendant's motion for a directed verdict was denied, and it excepts.

Exceptions overruled.

Before FIELD, C. J., and LUMMUS, DOLAN, RONAN, and SPALDING, JJ.

H. Kisloff and K. L. Arbetter, both of Boston, for plaintiffs.

H. S. Avery, of Boston, for defendants.

SPALDING, Justice.

The question for decision in this case is whether there was sufficient evidence of the negligence of the defendant to warrant its submission to a jury. The case comes to us on the defendant's exceptions to the denial of a motion for a directed verdict.

The following is a summary of the pertinent evidence. On August 19, 1943, a truck and trailer owned by the defendant and operated by Lambert, its employee, ¹ crashed into a house owned by the plaintiffs Vincenzo and Santa Gangi on Willis Avenue, Medford. Prior to striking the Gangis' house, the truck went across the front walk and lawn of the plaintiffs Ida and Nicola Cimetti who lived next door. Willis Avenue is in a thickly settled district made up of ‘single, two-family and three-family houses.’ The truck had come from Edward Street. In order to get into Willis Avenue from Edward Street it was necessary to make a right turn (east) into Hicks Avenue where Edward Street ends, to proceed for about forty feet on Hicks Avenue, and to make a left turn (north) into Willis Avenue. The Cimettis' house was on the northeast corner of Willis Avenue and Hicks Avenue and the Gangis' house was approximately forty feet to the north on the same side of the street. From Edward Street to the Cimettis' house it was down grade. The grade on Edward Street varied from thirteen per cent to sixteen and five tenths per cent. An engineer called by the plaintiffs testified that ‘a fifteen per cent down grade was as steep as the steepest hill in Boston such as Corey Hill.’

The truck as it passed over the Cimettis' property knocked down a wire fence supported by iron posts set in a cement foundation, and passed over and damaged a stone boundary wall two feet high and eight inches thick. As the truck struck the Gangis' house there was ‘a terrible big noise, it was just like an earthquake,’ and dishes and pictures began to fall. The damage to the Gangis' house was, as the defendant concedes, substantial. The front wheels of the truck ‘were inside the cellar,’ and several of the foundation blocks ‘came right out of the foundation * * * up to the furnace.’ The floor in the dining room was lifted up and ‘timbers had been pushed so that the side of the house was bulging out.’

From answers to interrogatories to Lambert, the driver (put in evidence by the plaintiffs), it appeared that he first applied his brakes when he was about sixty to sixty-five feet from the point of the accident. The distance from the place where the truck left the...