Smith v. Joe's Sanitary Mkt., Inc.

• Decision Date: 23 December 1933
• Parties: SMITH v. JOE'S SANITARY MARKET, Inc.
• Court: Maine Supreme Court

169 A. 900

SMITH

v. JOE'S SANITARY MARKET, Inc.

Supreme Judicial Court of Maine.

Dec. 23, 1933.

Exceptions from Superior Court, Cumberland County.

Action by Florence B. Smith, administratrix, against Joe's Sanitary Market, Incorporated. Directed verdict for defendant. On exception.

Exception overruled.

Argued before PATTANGALL, C. J., and DUNN, STURGIS, BARNES, and THAXTER, JJ.

Harry C. Libby, of Portland, for plaintiff.

Verrill, Hale, Booth & Ives, of Portland, for defendant.

DUNN, Justice.

This action was brought by the plaintiff, as administratrix of the estate of her late husband (who died intestate), to recover damages for personal injuries sustained by him, on February 18, 1933, as a result of having been struck by defendant's automobile truck. The vehicle was being operated for its owner, at the estimated speed of thirty-five miles an hour, on Main street, in Westbrook, at midday. Plaintiffs intestate had just been arrested, at the instance of the wife, in nonsupport proceedings for commitment to the county jail, and, by permission of the officer having him in charge, was crossing the highway on foot, to obtain some desired article from his own car. Going in diagonal direction, he had reached the middle of the trolley tracks in the center of the forty-one foot business street. It is not contradicted that he stopped, looked toward the truck, on-coming, "a car length or a Car length and a half away"; "jumped, as if to cross the street," directly into the path of the truck, and was immediately hit. He died thirteen hours later. The truck driver testifies that, on first seeing the pedestrian stepping to the pavement from the sidewalk, he released the accelerator, to slacken the truck's speed; he also testifies that he inferred that the man, whose conduct he observed continuously, would stay between the car rails, until the truck should have passed, on its course, three feet from the nearest rail, on its own proper side of the street.

At the close of the evidence, defendant moved for a directed verdict. The motion was granted. Plaintiff excepted. Her counsel strongly urges that the evidence disclosed a case for the jury, and that the trial judge was not justified in ordering a verdict for defendant.

The court below evidently felt, either that there was no ground for holding defendant responsible for actionable negligence, or, assuming the contention that plaintiff made a prima facie case, that plaintiffs decedent, whose due care the...