Spindler v. Wells
| Decision Date | 06 October 1925 |
| Docket Number | 24651 |
| Citation | 276 S.W. 387 |
| Parties | SPINDLER v. WELLS |
| Court | Missouri Supreme Court |
James J. Seeley and Earl M. Pirkey, both of St. Louis (Wood & Teasdale, of St. Louis, of counsel), for appellant.
Charles W. Bates, T. E. Francis, Byron G. Carpenter, and A. E. Park all of St. Louis, for respondent.
Action for personal injuries. Trial by jury resulted in a verdict for defendant, and plaintiff has appealed. Our jurisdiction is fixed by the demand of the petition.
Plaintiff's evidence tended to show the following facts: Plaintiff and two other men were riding with one Johnson in an automobile owned and driven by him. Said automobile was proceeding eastward near the 6500 block on Manchester avenue in the city of St. Louis when it came into collision with one of the street cars of defendant receiver, and plaintiff was injured.
The portion of Manchester avenue there devoted to automobile and other vehicular traffic, except street cars, is approximately 30 feet wide. Immediately sough and parallel lie the double tracks of the street car line. West-bound street cars use the north track, and east-bound street cars use the south track. At a little after midnight on May 29, 1921, the four men were returning from a ride about town and out in St. Louis county. Plaintiff saw a street car coming west upon the north track and alongside of it two automobiles running abreast. The automobile in which plaintiff was riding continued eastward until the driver feared the oncoming automobiles would not give him sufficient room to enable his car to pass between them and the street car, and he attempted to cross the north or west-bound street car track and drive his machine south of the approaching street car. The driver and plaintiff underestimated the speed of the street car, and it struck the rear of the automobile before it could clear the track.
Plaintiff offered testimony tending to show that the street car was traveling in excess of the ordinance speed, and that the automobile was moving within the ordinance speed, and that the automobile could have been and was seen in a perilous position for a sufficient length of time to have enabled the motorman in the exercise of ordinary care to have stopped the street car and avoided the collision. An expert former motorman testified to the various distances within which that particular kind of street car could be stopped at the several different speeds fixed in the testimony.
Some of the testimony offered by the defendant tended to show that the automobile was seen at a distance of 100 to 150 feet; that it was then moving eastward astride the north rail of the south or east-bound track, and that the left wheels of the automobile were so near said rail that the street car, moving along the other track, could pass said automobile without striking it, and that, when the two vehicles came within a few feet of one another, the automobile swerved suddenly to the north and struck the street car just back of the vestibule. At least one of defendant's witnesses put the automobile astride the south rail of the north track during all the time it was approaching instead of astride the north rail of the south track. Another witness for defendant testified that the automobile was 'wobbling' from side to side as it approached.
While it is not clearly stated in the evidence, we gather the impression that pla...
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