Sarnak v. Cehula

• Decision Date: 03 June 1958
• Citation: 142 A.2d 204,393 Pa. 5
• Parties: Stephen SARNAK, Appellee, v. Anna CEHULA, Administratrix of the Estate of Stephen Cehula, Deceased, Appellant.
• Court: Pennsylvania Supreme Court

142 A.2d 204

393 Pa. 5

Stephen SARNAK, Appellee, v. Anna CEHULA, Administratrix of the Estate of Stephen Cehula, Deceased, Appellant.

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.

June 3, 1958.

G Clinton Fogwell, Jr., Reilly, Wood & Fogwell, Philip J Reilly, Harold K. Wood, West Chester, for appellant.

Joseph G. McKeone, Phoenixville, for appellee.

Before CHARLES ALVIN JONES, C. J., and BELL, MUSMANNO, ARNOLD BENJAMIN R. JONES and COHEN, JJ.

MUSMANNO, Justice.

Two motorists were driving through the shadows of the night (June 10, 1950 1:55 a. m.) on Route No. 83 between Spring City and Phoenixville, when they beheld in the rays of the headlights of their car the remains of a tragedy of the road. An overturned Oldsmobile four-door sedan, with its wheels pointing to the sky and its roof hugging the ground, lay in the field some fifteen feet west of the 30-foot highway on which the men were traveling. The upper part of a human body with a blood-smeared arm suspended limply through the shattered windshield of the wrecked automobile, the feet of another body projected out from beneath the capsized roof. A few moments later two other motorists arrived on the scene, and the assembled four men lifted the car over to its wheels, releasing the bodies imprisoned within the wreckage. It developed later that the person who had been thrown through the windshield was a young man named Stephen Cehula. The one who had been pinned beneath the roof was a youth called Stephen Sarnak. The door on the driver's side of the car was still closed, with the lower part of Cehula's body wedged behind the driving wheel. The front door on the opposite side of the car hung open.

A few minutes later a state policeman, Wm. F. Petrie, arrived and proceded to make observations and measurements in the endeavor to reconstruct the movements of the car prior to the disastrous termination of its ill-starred journey. On the highway at this point lay two pieces of a 40-foot telegraph pole; a third piece, being the upper extremity, dangled from the wires which it had originally upheld. The lowermost section of the pole had been uprooted from the hole in which it had been imbedded. This hole measured 10 feet from the car. From this evidence, no great deductive talent is required to conclude that the automobile had collided with the pole and it was this sudden stoppage which threw Cehula through the windshield to his death and catapulted Sarnak through the passenger's door to the ground where the car folded over him. Miraculously, Sarnak escaped death but he did sustain serious injuries, because of which he brought an action in trespass against the estate of the deceased Cehula, charging him with negligence in the operation of the car.

Since Stephen Sarnak, under the Act of May 23, 1887, P.L. 158, 28 P.S. § 322, was not permitted to testify, and since there had been no spectator to the happening of the catastrophe, the defendant administratrix of the estate of the deceased Stephen Cehula moved for a compulsory non-suit and, later, for binding instructions, contending that there was no evidence that Cehula was actually driving the car at the time of the crash, nor was there evidence, if it should be established he actually drove the car, that he had driven it negligently. The Trial Judge refused both motions and the jury returned a verdict in favor of the plaintiff. The defendant has appealed, urging upon us what was urged below.

Evidence in personal injury actions is not restricted to oral testimony. Physical objects and markings, under certain circumstances may speak with a tongue more eloquently convicing than that of any human being. The fact that the telegraph pole (also referred to as a utility and telephone pole), which was 12 inches in diameter and 40 feet in height, had been violently unearthed and torn into hree chunks, speaks conclusively of the velocity with which the car was moving when it encountered the pole. ^[1] Four-wheel skid marks in the road which extended diagonally from the base of the pole for 125 feet to the berm on the eastern side of the road told the incontrovertible story of a car traveling beyond the control of the driver. ^[2] This deduction is reinforced by the tire marks in the berm which extended for 60 feet back to a curve in the road. These writings on the highway tell the oft-related tale of the motorist who goes into a curve at a greater centrifugal speed than is prudent, ^[3] who...