Mississippi City Lines v. Bullock

• Decision Date: 12 April 1943
• Docket Number: 35308.
• Citation: 13 So.2d 34,194 Miss. 630
• Court: Mississippi Supreme Court
• Parties: MISSISSIPPI CITY LINES, Inc., v. BULLOCK et al.

13 So.2d 34

194 Miss. 630

MISSISSIPPI CITY LINES, Inc., v. BULLOCK et al.

No. 35308.

Supreme Court of Mississippi

April 12, 1943

Hannah Simrall & Foote, of Hattiesburg, for appellant.

Homer W. Pittman and Currie & Currie, all of Hattiesburg, for appellee.

GRIFFITH Justice.

On February 27, 1942, appellant was an authorized carrier of passengers by motor-bus between the City of Hattiesburg and a point known as Palmer's Crossing and along a heavily traveled highway. About five o'clock on that afternoon Ray Bullock, a boy about twelve years old, took passage on one of appellant's busses to go from the city to his home south of the corporate limits of the city. The place at which the boy wanted to leave the bus was at a regular stop on the west side of the highway near a mail-box, which box was situated 41 feet south of a concrete bridge. The bridge was 16 feet wide, and the highway pavement was 18 feet wide, but on each side of the pavement were safe and sound shoulders 5 feet wide made of gravel. Thus the highway, including the shoulders, was 28 feet wide. The bus was about 7 feet wide and 25 feet long.

Just before the bridge was reached, the boy gave the customary signal to the driver by pressing the buzzer, which constituted an order to the driver to let the boy off at or near the mail-box stop, already mentioned. The driver obeyed the signal, and as the front end of the bus cleared the bridge the driver turned the bus to the right and came to a stop, so that the right front end of the bus was on the west-side shoulder, leaving, however, adequate room for the boy to alight on the shoulder; but the bus did not go far enough to bring both the front and rear right sides thereof parallel with the highway so as to give as much highway clearance as practicable, but when the bus stopped, it was then standing obliquely with the rear end of the bus about four feet south of the bridge and its left rear wheel about two feet to the left or east of the center of the pavement.

The exit door was at the front right-hand side of the bus, and when it came to a stop, the driver opened the door and let the boy out, and the boy alighted on the gravel shoulder west of the pavement. As already mentioned, the highway opposite this point was heavily traveled, and as the bus driver opened the door to let the boy out the driver saw an automobile driven by a woman approaching from the south at a high rate of speed. The driver, however, said nothing to the boy. When the boy alighted, he did not remain until the bus could move away, but he proceeded at once and evidently on the run along the gravel shoulder on the west side of the bus and around its rear and into the pavement and into the path of the woman aforementioned, and was hit by the woman's car, resulting in injuries to him from which he died the next day.

The boy was employed as a newsboy, delivering newspapers in the City of Hattiesburg. His home was south of the city, as stated and was located about a quarter of a mile to the east of the highway and in a direction opposite said mail-box stop. The means which he had customarily been using to get home after the conclusion of his duties for the day as delivery boy was to take the bus and get off at the point already mentioned.

Appellees, as the next of kin of the decedent, instituted suit against the bus company and the woman who was driving the northbound automobile, and recovered judgment in the trial court against both, from which judgment the bus company alone has appealed.

As against the bus company appellees averred: (1) That the manner in which the bus stopped so as not to leave the clearance required by statute on its east or highway side was an actionable negligence; (2) that it was the duty of the bus driver to warn the boy of the approaching automobile; (3) that it was negligence to let the boy off while the approaching northbound automobile was in sight; (4) that the place where the boy was let off was a dangerous place so that the relationship of carrier and passenger had not terminated when the injury occurred; and (5) that the position of the bus constituted an unlawful obstruction and was a continuing or concurrent negligence which contributed to the ultimate event of the injury.

Although it was proved, as stated, that the position in which the bus stood was violative of Section 90, Chap. 200, Laws 1938, as construed in the recent case, Teche Lines, Inc., v. Danforth, Miss., 12 So.2d 784, not yet reported [in State report], we are of the opinion that this was not the proximate cause of the injury, and we shall reach and dispose of the other contentions during the further course of this opinion.

Although one may be negligent, yet if another, acting independently and voluntarily, puts in motion another and intervening cause which efficiently thence leads in unbroken sequence to the injury, the latter is the proximate cause and the original negligence is relegated to the position of a remote and, therefore, a non-actionable cause. Negligence which merely furnishes the condition or occasion upon which injuries are received, but does not put in motion the agency by or through which the injuries are inflicted, is not the proximate cause thereof. The question is, did the facts constitute a succession of events so linked together as to make a natural whole, or was there some new and independent cause intervening between the alleged wrong and the injury? 38 Am.Jur. p. 702; Thompson v. Mississippi Cent. R. Co., 175 Miss. 547, 554, 166 So. 353. And so say all the authorities, among which, as a striking illustration, is Bufkin v. Louisville & N. R. Co., 161 Miss. 594, 137 So. 517.

Here, according to the substantially undisputed testimony, the bus was placed, so far as the exit door was concerned, so that the boy could and did alight on a sound and safe gravel shoulder, not on, but away from, the paved or traveled portion of the highway. It was a perfectly safe place for him to stand and remain until the bus should move forward on its accustomed way. The relation between the carrier and the boy as a passenger was thereupon at an end, and the carrier had the right to assume that the boy would so remain until the bus moved away, as is customarily done by passengers when alighting from busses or street cars. But instead of doing so, the boy of his own volition set himself in motion, and passed rapidly down the west side of the bus and out from its rear and into the traveled highway where he was struck and killed, as already stated.

It is obvious, therefore, that if this is not clearly a case of an intervening independent cause, it would be next to impossible to put a case where that doctrine would actually apply. And it is appropriate to repeat that the passenger was not put off in the traveled portion of the highway where cars were passing on the same side of the bus from which the passenger alighted, as was the case in Wood v. North Carolina Public-Service Corporation, 174 N.C. 697, 94 S.E. 459, 1 A.L.R. 942, on which appellees so strongly rely. Nor have we here a case where there was a collision with the bus and an injury to a passenger then therein or to a person in the other colliding vehicle, and cases dealing with a situation of that kind are not in point here.

A number of cases dealing with a parallel state of facts have been decided in the courts of other states. The case which appears to have been cited and quoted from more often than any other is Waldron v. Southwestern Bus Co., 42 Ohio App. 549, 182 N.E. 596, and we quote that opinion in full:

"The plaintiff was a passenger in the daytime on a bus of the defendant company from Norwalk * * * intending to alight at Townsend, about seven miles east of that city. The bus had a regular stopping place just before crossing an intersecting road at that point, but on the day in question failed to stop at the usual place. Miss Waldron then...