Redick v. Peterson

• Decision Date: 10 January 1918
• Docket Number: 14232.
• Citation: 99 Wash. 368,169 P. 804
• Parties: REDICK et ux. v. PETERSON et al.
• Court: Washington Supreme Court

169 P. 804

99 Wash. 368

REDICK et ux. v. PETERSON et al.

No. 14232.

Supreme Court of Washington

January 10, 1918

Department 2. Appeal from Superior Court, King County; Boyd J. Tallman Judge.

Action by John H. Redick and wife against Oscar L. Peterson, Selma Peterson, and the Pacific Coast Casualty Company. Judgment for plaintiffs, and defendants appeal. Judgment against defendant Selma Peterson stricken and judgment in other respects affirmed.

Geo McKay and Henry S. Noon, both of Seattle, for appellants.

Myers &amp Johnstone, of Seattle, for respondents.

HOLCOMB J.

This action for personal injuries, alleged to have been caused to respondent Mrs. Redick by the negligent operation of a jitney owned and operated by appellant Oscar L. Peterson, after a trial by the court without a jury, resulted in findings and conclusions and a judgment for $250 in favor of respondents. The questions of the negligence of the jitney driver and the contributory negligence of Mrs. Redick were in issue and resolved by the court, upon the facts shown, against appellants.

Mrs. Redick testified in effect that, on reaching the street intersection where the accident occurred, she stopped a second, looked down the street to the west, and saw several automobiles in that direction in the middle of the block, looked then across and up the street, and seeing no vehicles to block her passage, without looking again to the west, started across the street upon the regular sidewalk crossing, and, when about midway between the curb and the street car tracks and without any notice, warning, or alarm from appellant coming upon her from the west, was struck and severely and painfully injured. There was testimony that the jitney was running at a speed of from 18 to 20 miles per hour.

The question then is: Is it contributory negligence for a pedestrian, after having looked once in a direction along a street for vehicles that might interfere with safe passage across the street at a regular street crossing and in other necessary directions along the street, to fail to look a second time in the first direction? We think not as a matter of law. Cases to similar effect have been before us and so decided. Franey v. Seattle Taxicab Co., 80 Wash 396, 141 P. 890; Chase v. Seattle Taxicab, etc., Co., 78 Wash. 537, 139 P. 499; Ludwigs v. Dumas, 72 Wash. 68, 129 P. 903; Hillebrant v. Manz, 71 Wash. 250, 128 P. 892; Birch v. Abercrombie, 74 Wash. 486, 133 P. 1020, 50 L. R. A. (N. S.) 59; Tschirley v. Lambert, 70 Wash. 72, 126 P. 80; Johnson v. Johnson, 85 Wash. 18, 147 P. 649. The Johnson Case, supra, is almost completely parallel with the case before us. A very similar case also was that of Hillebrant v. Manz, supra. In those cases under such circumstances such precautions having been taken, it was held as a matter of law that contributory negligence on the part of the injured person could not be inferred. In such case the question of contributory negligence is a question for the jury or the trier of the facts. The trial court, having heard the evidence, resolved the facts in favor of the testimony of Mrs. Redick and her witnesses and against any...