De Luca v. Manchester Laundry & Dry Cleaning Co., Inc.
| Decision Date | 14 March 1955 |
| Parties | Vincent DE LUCA and Elvira DeLuca, his wife, v. MANCHESTER LAUNDRY AND DRY CLEANING COMPANY, Inc., and Charles Chiardio. Manchester Laundry and Dry Cleaning Company, Inc., Appellant in Nos. 282 and 288. Elvira DE LUCA, Appellant in No. 299. |
| Court | Pennsylvania Supreme Court |
Action for injuries sustained by pedestrian who, while walking around truck which was blocking sidewalk, was struck by automobile. The Court of Common Pleas No. 2 (Tried in No. 5) Philadelphia County, as of No. 5243, September Term, 1953 rendered judgment in favor of motorist but against truck owner, and truck owner and injured party appealed. The Supreme Court, at Nos. 282, 288, and 299, January Term, 1954 Stern, C. J., held that pedestrian who walked around truck which was blocking sidewalk on quiet street, and was struck by a carefully-driven automobile was guilty of negligence, rather than a mere error of judgment, and truck owner's action in blocking sidewalk was, even if negligence, not the proximate cause of accident.
Judgment in favor of motorist affirmed; judgment against truck owner reversed.
Ordinarily, question of whether a defendant's negligence is proximate cause of accident is for finder of fact, but where relevant facts are not in dispute and remoteness of causal connection between defendant's negligence and plaintiff's injury clearly appears, question is one of law, within scope of appellate review.
Lynwood F. Blount, Peter P. Zion, Leonard A. Green, Philadelphia, for Manchester Laundry and Dry Cleaning Co., Inc.
Herbert H. Hadra, Maurice Freedman, and Robert H. Arronson, Philadelphia, for Elvira DeLuca, Howard R. Detweiler, Frank R. Ambler, Philadelphia, for Charles Chiardio.
Before STERN, C. J., and STEARNE, JONES, BELL, CHIDSEY and MUSMANNO, JJ.
The problem here presented concerns the determination of the proximate cause of the accident in suit.
Mifflin Street, in Philadelphia, is 26 feet wide from curb to curb. It is a one-way street open only for eastbound traffic. The business establishment of defendant Manchester Laundry and Dry Cleaning Company, Inc., is situated on the norht side of the street 72 feet east of 11th Street. A loading platform protrudes from the front of its property and extends over the sidewalk 4 feet 2 inches; the sidewalk itself is 12 feet wide. On May 29, 1953, the day of the accident, a truck of the Laundry Company, while the driver was engaged in loading it, was backed up to within a foot of this platform. As the truck was 18 1/2 feet in length it covered the remaining width of the sidewalk and extended an additional 11 feet 8 inches into the roadway, leaving a distance of approximately 14 feet 4 inches between the front of the truck and the south curb of the street. An automobile happened at the time to be parked along the curb on the south side but slightly to the east of the truck.
At about 7:30 in the morning plaintiff, Elvira DeLuca, walking westwardly on the north sidewalk and finding her passage blocked by the truck, stepped out into the roadway in order to proceed around it. The day was clear. She testified that she walked parallel to the side of the truck and at a distance from it of about 5 or 6 feet, that when she came to a line with the front of it she looked and saw an automobile approaching, that she took a step backward, ‘ about a foot or so,’ but the automobile ‘ came crooked,’ that is to say, swerved toward her and struck her. She (together with her husband) brought suit to recover for her injuries against the Laundry Company and against Charles Chiardio who was the driver of the automobile. Chiardio's version of the accident was entirely different from that of plaintiff. He testified that he was traveling at the rate of only about 15 miles an hour, that he maintained a two-foot clearance as he passed in front of the truck, that he did not change his course but that plaintiff ‘ came out from alongside the laundry [truck] running or walking-I don't know whether she was running or walking, but she came in contact with the left front of my car and sprawled along the left side of the hood, * * *’ ; he stopped within half the length of his car.
The case was tried by the court without a jury. The trial judge found that Chiardio was not in any manner negligent and that his car did not swerve into the plaintiff; that plaintiff was guilty of a mistake of judgment but not of negligence in coming into contact with the car because she acted while in a perilous position; that the parking of defendant's truck was illegal and was the proximate cause of the accident. Accordingly he found in favor of defendant Chiardio but in favor of the plaintiff against the Manchester Laundry Company in the sum of $3,200. The court en banc dismissed exceptions filed by the Laundry Company to the finding against it, and by both the Laundry Company and the plaintiff to the finding for Chiardio, and entered judgments accordingly. There followed the present appeals by the Laundry Company and the plaintiff.
The court's findings of facts exculpating Chiardio from responsibility for the accident were entirely justified. The trial judge had to choose between the conflicting versions of the accident presented by Chiardio and the plaintiff, and his conclusion, affirmed as it was by the court en banc, must be accepted as a finality. But the appeal of the Laundry Company from the judgment against it must be sustained. In the first place, there is a question whether it was really guilty of a violation of the law in having its truck stand as it did while being loaded. It is true that section 1019(a) of the Vehicle Code of May 1, 1929, P.L. 905, as amended, 75 P.S. § 611, provides that 75 P.S. § 612. But ‘ Parking’ is defined in section 102, as amended, as ‘ The standing of a vehicle, * * * whether occupied or not, upon a highway otherwise than temporarily for the purpose and while actually engaged in loading or unloading, * * *.’ 75 P.S. § 2. Accordingly it has frequently been held that it was not intended by the Code to prohibit merely temporary blockings of the highway in the course of the ordinary incidents of traffic or the reasonable necessities of business and industry: Henry v. S. Liebovitz & Sons, Inc., 312 Pa. 397, 401, 167 A. 304, 305, 306; Fritz v. York Motor Express Co., 358 Pa. 398, 401, 402, 58 A.2d 12, 13; Johnson v. Angretti, 364 Pa. 602, 606, 73 A.2d 666, 668; Commonwealth v. Haley, 25 Del. Co. R. 209. In the present case there was no testimony whatever as to the length of time the truck was being loaded prior to the happening of the accident; it may have been in front of the Laundry Company's property only for a few minutes at most.
In the second place, even assuming, arguendo, that the Laundry Company was guilty of a violation of the provisions of the statute and therefore negligent per se,[1] such negligence was not a ground of liability unless it was the proximate and efficient cause of the accident in question: Hayes v. Schomaker, 302 Pa. 72, 77, 152 A. 827, 829; Hutchinson v. Follmer Trucking Company, 333 Pa. 424, 427, 5 A.2d 182, 183; Shakley v. Lee, 368 Pa. 476, 478, 84 A.2d 322, 323; Purol, Inc. v. Great Eastern System, Inc., 130 Pa.Super. 341, 344, 345, 197 A. 543, 544, 545; Vunak v. Walters, 157 Pa.Super. 660, 662, 43 A.2d 536, 537. This is because an act of negligence which creates merely a passive background or circumstance of an accident does not give rise to a right of recovery if the accident was in fact caused by an intervening act of negligence which is a superseding cause: Stone v. City of Philadelphia, 302 Pa. 340, 153 A. 550; Schwartz v. Jaffe, 324 Pa. 324, 332, 188 A. 295, 298; Kline v. Moyer and Albert, 325 Pa. 357, 191 A. 43, 111 A.L.R. 406; Ashworth v. Hannum, 347 Pa. 393, 397, 398, 32 A.2d 407, 409; Venorick v. Revetta, 152 Pa.Super. 455, 33 A.2d 655.
The question, then, is whether the parking of the Laundry Company's truck, even if it were a violation of the statute and therefore an act of negligence, was a proximate or only what the law regards as a remote cause of plaintiff's accident. The theory adopted by the court below that the plaintiff was placed in a position of peril by reason of the blocking of the sidewalk and being compelled thereby to walk out into the roadway; therefore she was not guilty of negligence in what she did but only of an error of judgment. In our opinion the facts do not admit of such an interpretation. Except under unusual circumstances there is certainly no particular ‘ peril’ encountered by an adult person[2] in walking into the roadway of a street, especially in the present case where the photographs in evidence show Mifflin Street to be a quiet, largely residential thoroughfare, with only one-way traffic. Without some act of negligence on the part of either the plaintiff or Chiardio no accident could or would have resulted, and the Laundry Company was not bound to anticipate such negligence: Polonofsky v. Dobrosky, 313 Pa. 73 76, 169 A. 93, 94; Leoni v. Reinhard, 327 Pa. 391, 393, 394, 194 A. 490, 491. Accepting the facts as found by the court below it is clear that plaintiff, walking into the street at a...
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