Garabedian v. Superior Court of City and County of San Francisco
| Decision Date | 14 February 1963 |
| Citation | 59 Cal.2d 124,28 Cal.Rptr. 318,378 P.2d 590 |
| Court | California Supreme Court |
| Parties | , 378 P.2d 590 Halg GARABEDIAN, Petitioner, v. The SUPERIOR COURT OF the CITY AND COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO, Respondent; The PEOPLE, Real Party in Interest. S. F. 21236. |
Garry, Dreyfus & McTernan and Benjamin Dreyfus, San Francisco, for petitioner.
No appearance for respondent.
Stanley Mosk, Atty. Gen., John S. McInerny and Robert R. Granucci, Deputy Attys. Gen., for real party in interest.
Petitioner seeks a writ of prohibition commanding the Superior Court of the City and County of San Francisco to dismiss an information charging him with a violation of section 20001 of the Vehicle Code.
Section 20001 of the Vehicle Code reads: 'The driver of any vehicle involved in an accident resulting in injury to any person, other than himself, or death of any person shall immediately stop the vehicle at the scene of the accident and shall fulfill the requirements of Sections 20003 and 20004, and any person failing to stop or to comply with the requirements under such circumstances is guilty of a public offense and upon conviction thereof shall be punished by imprisonment in the state prison for not less than one year nor more than five years or in the county jail for not to exceed one year or by fine of not to exceed five thousand dollars ($5,000) or by both.'
At the time of his arraignment petitioner moved to have the information set aside on the ground that he had been held to answer without reasonable or probable cause. The trial court denied the motion.
The question for us to determine is whether there was any evidence, direct or indirect, at the preliminary hearing, of an essential element or ingredient of the offense charged, to-wit, whether petitioner knew he had had an automobile accident.
This question must be answered in the negative. John Ratto testified that he was working on Market Street in front of Manning's Coffee Shop about 2:30 in the morning of July 27, 1962. The witness was on the north side of Market Street, west of the Montgomery Street intersection. He heard a noise or thud, turned, and saw a man lying on the street next to a westbound automobile. He identified the car as a 1952 or 1953 dark green Buick. He did not see the vehicle strike the pedestrian.
The pedestrian was injured. The witness saw a part of the license number of the vehicle and told it to a taxi driver, who wrote it down for him. He thereafter gave it to the police or to the ambulance driver.
Officer Lindgren, of the Accident Investigation Bureau of the San Francisco Police Department, testified that he obtained from Mr. Ratto three letters and two digits of the license number of the Buick. He reported this information to his headquarters and was subsequently given petitioner's name and address.
About 5:30 o'clock the same morning, the officer called on petitioner, having first telephoned him. The officer ascertained from petitioner that he owned a 1954 green Buick, which the officer inspected. There was no damage to the vehicle, although there were brush marks on the left front and on the bumper on the left side.
Petitioner answered questions freely. He told Officer Lindgren that he had been in San Jose and had returned home, he thought, about 3 o'clock in the morning; that no one else had driven his car; that he had been violently ill during the course of the evening; that he did not know he had been involved in an accident; and that he did not know whether he had been on Market Street at the time of the accident.
Officer Kennedy, of the San Francisco Police Department, testified that he and his partner had been on patrol in the downtown financial area on the evening in question and saw petitioner about 2:30 in the morning parked on Bush Street about 100 feet west of the intersection of Bush and Montgomery Streets, headed toward Kearny Street (the wrong way, since Bush Street is one-way eastbound). He said that petitioner had been violently ill, throwing up, and that petitioner was 'deathly sick, his face was white, and he had vomitus about him and his clothing.' The officers determined that petitioner '* * * wasn't drunk * * *'...
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