Kirby v. Keating
| Decision Date | 28 May 1930 |
| Citation | 171 N.E. 671,271 Mass. 390 |
| Parties | KIRBY v. KEATING. |
| Court | United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Exceptions from Superior Court, Norfolk County; Alonzo R. Weed, Judge.
Action by Mary E. Kirby against James F. Keating. Verdict for plaintiff, and defendant brings exceptions.
Exceptions overruled.
J. S. McCann, of Boston, for plaintiff.
David H. Fulton, of Boston, for defendant.
This is an action to recover for personal injuries alleged to have been received by the plaintiff by reason of the gross negligence of the defendant while she was riding as his guest.
The plaintiff testified that at about 10:15 or 10:30 o'clock in the evening of June 11, 1927, accompanied by a friend, she was waiting for a street car in South Norwood; that the defendant, who lived on the next street to her, came along in his automobile and offered to take them home; that she and her friend sat in the back seat until her friend alighted at her home on Park Street, and the defendant then asked the plaintiff to sit in the front seat with him, which she did; that instead of taking her to her home by the shortest way, he went ‘the longest way 'round’; that when they were on Neponset Street he suggested that they go by a circuitous route to her home, and she told him it was late and she wanted to go home; that they had then reached a point opposite Pleasant Street. She further testified that she asked him what time it was; that he had on a wrist watch and started to look at it; that she had not seen the watch before; that when he started to look at the watch they were about opposite a point marked ‘180’ on a map which was offered in evidence. She stated that ‘The defendant, in looking at his wrist watch, bent his head down, did not take his eyes off the watch and did not watch the road; kept looking at his watch all the time; his wrist watch was on his left hand; seemed to take a long time to look at it, * * * and the first thing I knew * * * we had hit the tree. He put his arm under the little light on the dashboard. * * * It was a little bulb with a shade over it and he held the watch close to the light. They were on the right hand side of the road when he began to look at the watch. There was nothing else on the road. It took him quite a while to look at the watch and he had not stopped looking before he struck the tree. The plaintiff didn't notice that the car swerved over to the left and didn't notice it going over, but it got over to the left of the road. The only thing she could say is that he was bent over with his head, trying to see the time, and the left hand was under the wheel and over at the dashboard and he had his head quite close to the watch, almost touching the dashboard. The plaintiff knew that he had ‘looked up quick and he gave the wheel a jerk-like as though he had found himself off of the road-and tried to get back on the road and the next thing I knew we had struck the tree.’' The plaintiff further testified that as the car came up Neponset Street towards Pleasant Street it was travelling twenty-five or thirty miles an hour and had not slowed down up to the time it struck the tree. There was evidence that it was a clear night and that the road was dry.
The defendant testified that the lights of a car going south on Neponset Avenue blinded him; that he could not see anything; that he put his brakes on; that he did not know where he was going; that he was...
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Cook v. Cole
...v. Cuneo [Mass.] 173 N. E. 427), or that his attention was diverted to other matters, as in Rog v. Eltis, supra, and in Kirby v. Keating (Mass.) 171 N. E. 671. Neither the plaintiff's account of the accident nor that of the defendant showed that the defendant was driving improperly with rel......
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Winslow v. Tibbetts, s. 5466-5468.
...Mass. 283, 175 N. E. 629; Parker v. Moody, 274 Mass. 100, 174 N. E. 189; Logan v. Reardon, 274 Mass. 83,174 N. E. 264; Kirby v. Keating, 271 Mass. 390, 171 N. E. 671; Learned v. Hawthorne, 269 Mass. 554, 169 N. E. 557; Blood v. Adams, 269 Mass. 480, 169 N. E. 412; Manning v. Simpson, 261 Ma......
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...power so to do must be exercised with the utmost caution.’ The cases at bar are within that class of cases illustrated in Kirby v. Keating, 271 Mass. 390, 171 N.E. 671; Meeney v. Doyle, 276 Mass. 218, 177 N.E. 6;Bruce v. Johnson, 277 Mass. 273, 178 N.E. 518;Connors v. Boland, 282 Mass. 518,......
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