Summers v. Brown
| Decision Date | 06 February 1936 |
| Docket Number | 9. |
| Citation | 183 A. 246,170 Md. 695 |
| Parties | SUMMERS v. BROWN. |
| Court | Maryland Court of Appeals |
Appeal from Baltimore City Court; Duke Bond, Judge.
Action by Ignatius Brown against T. B. Summers, Jr., individually and trading as the General Taxicab Service. Judgment for plaintiff, and defendant appeals.
Affirmed.
Argued before BOND, C.J., URNER, OFFUTT, PARKE, SLOAN, MITCHELL, and SHEHAN, JJ.
Samuel J. Aaron, of Baltimore (Howard L. Aaron, of Baltimore, on the brief), for appellant.
Ben B Sellman, of Baltimore (Samuel S. Levin, of Baltimore, on the brief), for appellee.
The appeal is by a defendant at law, from a judgment for damages to the plaintiff from being struck by the defendant's taxicab. A first suit was terminated by a voluntary judgment of non pros. after the plaintiff's evidence had been found legally insufficient to support a recovery, and a verdict had been directed for the defendant. In this second suit, contradicting or denying some of the evidence he gave in the first, and still testifying with some inconsistencies the plaintiff stated that as he walked, following three people ahead of him, from the side of Park Heights avenue in Baltimore to enter an electric car waiting in the center of the street, the taxicab came unexpectedly out of the line for waiting automobiles and struck him. There was, as he knew, a policeman somewhere in the street crossing for directing traffic, and it was testified that the taxicab moved at his direction, but the plaintiff said that while going out to the car he could not, or did not, see the policeman, and, again said he did not look for him, but, following the three people ahead, went forward at a signal from the driver of an automobile which had been stopped to let the people pass. This evidence was contradicted by defendant's witnesses and by testimony of the plaintiff himself, read to the jury from a transcript of evidence at the first trial, but all weaknesses in it were for the consideration of the jury, and of the court on a motion for a new trial. Porter v Quarry Co., 161 Md. 34, 37, 155 A. 428. It was, we think, legally sufficient to support a finding that the accident was caused by a lack of ordinary care on the driver's part in driving forward while people were passing him to a waiting street car. Margeson v. Town Taxi, Inc., 266 Mass. 192, 165 N.E. 20. And it seems to prevent a holding that on all the evidence ...
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