House v. Ryder

• Decision Date: 20 May 1930
• Citation: 150 A. 487
• Parties: HOUSE v. RYDER.
• Court: Maine Supreme Court

150 A. 487

HOUSE

v. RYDER.

Supreme Judicial Court of Maine.

May 20, 1930.

Report from Superior Court, Knox County.

Action by Edith House against George Ryder. On report.

Judgment for plaintiff.

Argued before PATTANGALL, C. J., DUNN, STURGIS, BARNES, and FARRINGTON, JJ., and PHILBROOK, A. R. J.

Oscar H. Emery, of Camden, for plaintiff.

Charles T. Smalley. of Rockland, for defendant.

PHILBROOK, A. R. J.

This case is before us on report. The record contains the customary stipulation that questions of law are involved of sufficient importance and doubt to warrant the case being sent forward to the law court on report, and the parties having agreed thereto, the case is reported upon so much of the evidence as is legally admissible, the law court to determine liability and to assess damages if the plaintiff is entitled to a verdict. The case arises from an automobile accident wherein the plaintiff, a pedestrian on a public way, was struck by an automobile driven by the defendant. There are no legal questions involved which have not been fully settled by numerous decisions. For the law court to assess damages in this class of cases, without seeing and hearing the parties and their witnesses, is a difficult task. It would have been more satisfactory to have had the case submitted to a jury under proper instructions, which the judge presiding at the trial below was amply qualified to give. There are precedents for reporting a case like the one at bar, and we willingly undertake the performance of our task, although it may be properly hoped that in the future such reported cases may gradually become more rare.

On the 19th day of November, 1929, soon after 8 o'clock in the evening, the plaintiff was a passenger on an electric street car running from Rockland to Thomaston. Near Thomaston is a hospital, operated by Dr. Everett W. Hodgkins, whose wife has been a friend of the plaintiff since their girlhood. The street upon which the electric car is operated passes the hospital. The plaintiff, for the purpose of a social call on Mrs. Hodgkins, took the electric car at Rockland. As the car approached the hospital, she signaled the motorman to stop, but before that had been accomplished the car had passed a short distance beyond her intended destination. The plaintiff alighted, and after the car had started, realizing that she was some distance from the hospital, walked back as the car moved along. Her testimony is: "I stepped in the car tracks and I thought I was perfectly safe, and I looked toward Rockland first and I saw no car in sight, and as I looked toward Thomaston village the lights of a car came up in front of me, and I put my head down, they blinded me so, and apparently it seemed so near, and the thought flashed through my mind that that car was coming quite close to me, but I didn't think it would hit me, and that was the last I knew until I was in Dr. Hodgkins' office." In response to questions proposed by her attorney, she insisted that she was standing on the railroad track when she first saw the automobile approaching; that as to being in or out of the track from that time until she was struck by the automobile, her position was the same; in brief, that when she came around the rear end of the street car she got on the car track and stayed there. In cross-examination she insisted that she was between the rails of the electric car track at the moment of collision, but was nearer the rail toward Dr. Hodgkins' house. No eyewitness of the accident was called to substantiate the testimony of the plaintiff, nor does the record disclose the existence of any such.

The defendant's testimony as to the collision is, substantially, that he first saw the trolley car headlight when he was leaving the busy section of Thomaston, that the highway is straight, that he did not know how far down the street the trolley car was located when he first saw its light, that he could not tell at that moment whether it was in motion or had stopped "on account of the glare," that he had passed about two car lengths from the glare before he saw somebody in the road, that his vision was not obstructed after he passed from the glare, that the concrete surface of the street on either side of the trolley track was about twelve feet in width, and that he was in the middle of that part of the concrete which was between the trolley track and the Hodgkins hospital. He testified that the plaintiff was "just about one step out on the cement road" when he first saw her, and also testified "as soon as she see me she put her hand up to her head like this (indicating) and stooped right down and struck the front end of my mudguard." The testimony of the defendant, likewise, had no corroboration from an eyewitness. When the defendant had stopped his automobile and gone to the aid of the prostrate plaintiff, he found that she was being assisted to rise by a man, who departed as soon as the plaintiff was within the hospital, but as to the identity of that man the defendant had no knowledge nor of his whereabouts at the time of the trial. The defendant testified that when plaintiff's hand bag was picked up its contents fell out, and, to quote his own words, "They were right in the car track, or not the car track but the auto's track, behind the car."

The officer who served the writ was asked whether, at that time, the defendant made some explanation as to the cause of the accident and where the plaintiff was when she was struck. In answer he said: "The night I served the paper on him he was talking with you (plaintiff's counsel) about the case and said that the lights blinded him on the car, on the electric car, and he never saw the woman until the car hit her; and afterwards in the conversation, I don't remember whether it was a direct question you asked him or not, but he stated that he thought she was about one pace from the car track, out of the car track, stepped out of the car track."

Taking into account all the testimony in the record, and giving it interpretation most favorable to the defendant, we think a jury would be justified in finding, first, that the defendant was blinded by the headlight of the electric car, and, second, that he was...