Grimes v. Carolina Coach Co.

• Decision Date: 30 November 1932
• Docket Number: 407.
• Citation: 166 S.E. 599,203 N.C. 605
• Parties: GRIMES et al. v. CAROLINA COACH CO.
• Court: North Carolina Supreme Court

166 S.E. 599

203 N.C. 605

GRIMES et al. v. CAROLINA COACH CO.

No. 407.

Supreme Court of North Carolina

November 30, 1932

Appeal from Superior Court, Davidson County; Harding, Judge.

Action by J. C. Grimes and another, administrators of W. T. Grimes deceased, against the Carolina Coach Company. From a judgment sustaining motion of nonsuit, plaintiffs appeal.

Affirmed.

Proof of negligence must rest upon more solid foundation than bare conjecture.

This is an action for damages for the wrongful death of W. T. Grimes due to the alleged negligence of the defendant. On the night of July 4, 1931, between Salisbury and Lexington, at a point on route No. 10, known as the Airport road, plaintiff's intestate was killed. Highway No. 10, at the intersection of the Airport road, runs approximately north and south. The pavement on the main highway is eighteen feet wide, and on each side thereof are dirt shoulders, approximately nine feet in width. Trench ditches border the shoulders on each side of the highway. Rain was falling, and the pavement was wet and slick.

A traveler named Meeks was driving a Ford touring car from Salisbury to Lexington; that is, from west to east along No 10. In the car with him as passengers were his wife and three children, a man named McKinney and a Mrs. Trant and her baby. The narrative of the traveler is substantially as follows "When I got around this curve *** I noticed head lights that seemed to be from an automobile directed across the highway or at an angle toward Charlotte, and at about the left front fender was a man waiving his arm, and I pulled up to where he was and he asked me would I give him a lift and said he had slipped into the side ditch." The man referred to by Meeks was the plaintiff's intestate, and at the time the rear wheels of his Buick car were in the ditch, bordering the shoulder on the south side of highway No. 10 or on the right-hand side of the road as you face Lexington. The car was approximately fourteen feet in length. Plaintiff's intestate had a towing chain in his hand, and Meeks consented to pull the car of plaintiff's intestate out of the ditch. Meeks thereupon headed his car to the north up the Airport road or across the north side of No. 10, said north side being the right-hand side of the highway as you face west toward Salisbury. Meeks then backed up toward the car of plaintiff's intestate. Continuing his narrative Meeks said: "He went to hook the chain on our Ford and I asked him was he hooking it to the housing and he said 'No.' So after he hitched the chain he got in his car and started the motor and I went to pulling and I think my motor choked once. About the third time we pulled I felt the slack from his car and I realized he was out of the ditch. He holloed and told me that was all right, so I stopped and heard him unhitching the chain from our car. He then came up to where I could talk to him over my left shoulder and asked me what he owed me. I told him not a cent in the world. He then thanked me and about this time McKinney says, 'Look out, here comes a bus.' *** I think he advised me the second time before I moved and then I pulled up in the Airport road *** out of the way of the bus, so the bus could pass, and while we were waiting, motor running and lights burning, I heard the crash, sounded like glass *** and I looked around to my left and saw the bus going over there toward the side ditch where it stopped. I got out of the Ford and about that time I noticed some men getting out of the bus and we all went over there where this man was lying in a puddle of water along the edge of the highway. He was lying some feet from his car toward Salisbury *** on the right hand side of the highway going toward Lexington about two feet on the hard surface." Soon an ambulance, in response to call, came to the scene, picked up plaintiff's intestate, carried him to a hospital in Lexington, where he died about two minutes after reaching the hospital.

From the intersection of the Airport road to a point 927 feet therefrom toward Lexington the highway is straight and the view unobstructed. A bus owned by the defendant, was proceeding westward from Lexington toward Salisbury, and therefore traveling along the north side of highway No. 10 or the right-hand side as you face Salisbury. A witness for plaintiff passed the car of plaintiff's intestate while it was in the ditch. He said that he "drove to the other side of the road to my left on the road to get around the car and pass the car. *** I met the bus, I would say, around four hundred yards toward Lexington from the intersection of the Airport road *** we were traveling in opposite directions, *** and I pulled off the hard surface on to the...