Haring v. Connell
| Decision Date | 16 March 1914 |
| Docket Number | 336 |
| Parties | Haring, Appellant, v. Connell |
| Court | Pennsylvania Supreme Court |
Argued February 9, 1914
Appeal, No. 336, Jan. T., 1913, by plaintiff, from order of C.P. Bucks Co., March T., 1913, No. 12, refusing to take off nonsuit in case of Owen Haring v. L.M. and C. A. Connell. Reversed.
Trespass to recover damages for personal injuries. Before HENRY, P.J. specially presiding.
The opinion of the Supreme Court states the case.
At the close of the plaintiff's case the court entered a nonsuit, which it subsequently refused to take off.
Error assigned was the refusal to take off nonsuit.
Assignments of error sustained and judgment reversed with a procedendo.
Calvin F. Smith, with him Henry A. James, and Smith, Paff & Laub, for appellant.
Harman Yerkes, with him Thomas & George Ross, for appellees.
Before FELL, C.J., BROWN, MESTREZAT, STEWART and MOSCHZISKER, JJ.
Shortly after seven o'clock in the evening of September 4, 1912, the appellant, while waiting for a trolley car to go to his home, was sitting on a wooden wing or approach to a public bridge which crossed a canal in Durham Township, Bucks County. A public road north of the approach runs nearly parallel to the canal. At the bridge it turns almost at right angles and crosses the canal. An automobile coming down this road, instead of safely making the turn at the bridge, ran into the frame approach to the same at the point where the appellant was sitting, the mud guard of the machine pinning him against the wing or approach and scraping the skin and tissue from one of his legs. In this action which he brought against the appellees, alleged to have been operating the automobile, the court ordered a nonsuit, on the ground, as we gather from what was said by the trial judge at the time he directed the judgment to be entered, that there was no evidence that the automobile was being operated at the time of the accident by the defendants, or by any one acting for them. On this appeal two other reasons are urged for sustaining the nonsuit: (1) the absence of any proof of negligence in the operation of the automobile; and (2) the contributory negligence of the plaintiff. These reasons will be first considered.
There was no testimony as to the mile rate of speed at which the automobile came down the road and turned in towards the bridge. The testimony of the plaintiff was, "It was traveling fast; it was coming very fast." Another witness, who did not see the machine coming, but heard it approaching while sitting in his house a short distance away said it was coming at a rate of speed greater than that of machines as they approached the bridge over the canal; and a third witness, who was in the same house at the time of the collision, testified that he heard it coming at an unusual speed, followed by a crash. Conceding this testimony in itself to be insufficient to show that the collision resulted from the operation of the automobile at an undue or dangerous rate of speed on the public highway, the jury could fairly have found from all the testimony that it was due to the careless and reckless driving of the machine as it approached the turn at the bridge. Bright front lights were on it, and the driver could see where he was going. If he was looking in front of him, as was his duty, he must have seen the turn in the road before he reached it and in time to have enabled him to so control the car that it would pass safely around the turn, which was twenty-five feet...
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