Glatz v. Kroeger Bros. Co.
Decision Date | 04 March 1919 |
Citation | 168 Wis. 635,170 N.W. 934 |
Parties | GLATZ v. KROEGER BROS. CO. |
Court | Wisconsin Supreme Court |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Appeal from Circuit Court, Milwaukee County; E. T. Fairchild, Judge.
Action by Lizzie Glatz against the Kroeger Bros. Company. Judgment for defendant, and plaintiff appeals. Reversed and remanded, with directions.
This is an action by the widow of one Cyprian Glatz to recover damages for the death of her husband, resulting from a collision between an automobile truck operated by the defendant and a motorcycle on which the deceased was riding at about 12:30 p. m. February 9, 1917, at the intersection of Nineteenth and Galena streets in the city of Milwaukee. Galena street runs east and west and Nineteenth street north and south. The deceased was going east on the south side of the roadway on Galena street, and the defendant's truck, driven by an employé, was going south on the west side of Nineteenth street. The two vehicles arrived at the intersection at nearly the same time and violently collided. The claim of the plaintiff is that the deceased reached the point of collision first and was negligently run into by the driver of the truck, while the defendant claims that the truck reached the point first, and that the motorcycle ran into its right front wheel. As a result of the collision the deceased was thrown from his motorcycle onto the sidewalk on the east side of Nineteenth street just south of the southeast corner of the intersection of the two streets, and instantly killed. The motorcycle was found in the roadway against the catch-basin at said corner, and the truck stopped on the sidewalk and in the parking space on the east side of Nineteenth street just south of the deceased. There was considerable snow packed hard in the street at the time. The front wheels of the truck were twisted and the axles bent as the result of the machine striking and mounting the curb. A special verdict was returned by the jury finding: (1) That the defendant's driver failed to exercise ordinary care in operating the automobile as it approached the place of collision; (2) that such failure was the proximate cause of the injury to the deceased; (3) that no want of ordinary care on the part of the deceased proximately contributed to cause his death; (4) that plaintiff's damages amounted to $4,500. Upon motion the trial judge changed the answer to the third question from “No” to “Yes,” thus finding the deceased guilty of contributory negligence and rendered judgment for the defendant, from which judgment the plaintiff appeals.Oscar W. Kreutzer, of Milwaukee, for appellant.
Lines, Spooner & Quarles, of Milwaukee, for respondent.
WINSLOW, C. J. (after stating the facts as above).
There were but four eyewitnesses of the accident, and they were all examined on the trial. Two schoolgirls, aged respectively 12 and 15 years, were standing on the northeast corner of Galena and Twentieth streets about 300 feet from the place of collision, and watched the deceased riding eastward on Galena street until the collision occurred, and both testified that the motorcycle reached the street intersection first, and that the truck shot out from behind a building on the northwest corner of Galena and Nineteenth street going very fast and ran into the motorcycle. The driver of the truck testified, in substance, that he reached the street intersection first, traveling at the rate of 12 or 13 miles an hour; that he was nearly two-thirds of the way across Galena street when the motorcycle came from the west directly toward his machine and made no turn; that he swung the machine directly to the east, but the motorcycle struck his right front wheel, and the deceased fell onto the right front fender; that the truck skidded and slewed around 1 1/4 times, pivoting on the right hind wheel, on which there was a chain; that when it ceased skidding it was pointing directly east and still had sufficient speed to mount the curb on the east side of Nineteenth street just south of the building line and run onto the sidewalk, twisting the front axles and bending or breaking the radius rods. A wagonboy 16 years old, who was riding in the...
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