Valley v. City Of Gastonia, 490.

• Decision Date: 14 December 1932
• Docket Number: No. 490.,490.
• Court: North Carolina Supreme Court
• Parties: VALLEY. v. CITY OF GASTONIA.

166 S.E. 791

203 N.C. 664

VALLEY.

v.CITY OF GASTONIA.

No. 490.

Supreme Court of North Carolina.

Dec. 14, 1932.

Appeal from Superior Court, Gaston County; Finley, Judge.

Action by Birdie L. Valley, administratrix of the estate of C. J. Valley, deceased, against the City of Gastonia. Judgment for defendant, and plaintiff appeals.

No error.

This was an action for wrongful death resulting from a collision of an automobile, driven by plaintiff's intestate, with a traffic post or silent policeman placed in the intersection of two streets of defendant city. An eyewitness introduced by plaintiff narrates the events substantially as follows: "It was close to six o'clock in the morning when I would leave my work, it was dark, was not day light. * * * As I backed out of the garage and got headed East on Franklin Street an automobile drove up behind me and followed me on down to my home, and as I stopped in front of my house he pulled around me over to the center of the street and never did get back out of the center, drove straight into the stop signal. It was about two hundred and fifty feet from my home. I saw him hit the structure. He was running about twenty miles an hour. He had followed me seven blocks down the street before I stopped at this place and had stayed behind me all the time. He passed me when I stopped at my front. The lights on his car were burning. When I heard the collision I went to him. I found the gentleman sitting under the steering wheel bent over the steering wheel. Nobody was there with him. I pulled him out of the automobile from under the steering wheel. He never spoke. * * * I did not notice particularly how the automobile was damaged, but it was pretty well torn up, the front end of it. * * * I did not notice any cars on Franklin Avenue going East or West at the time of the collision. * * * I could see the signal light from where I was. I could not recall right at the time if the light was burning. It was burning afterwards. I went up to it. I could not tell the exact lights burning on this signal light. I guess the lights changed two or three times while I was there. You enter up to the light with the light red, and there will come the caution light before the green light comes on. There are three globes in the signal tower--red, caution and green, and those signal lights are four-way signals. There was a signal inside of both sides of the signal block on Franklin Avenue and on both sides of Church Street. * * * There was a little light that shone down toward the base of the signal, and that light was burning when I went up to take the man out. There was a street light on the corner. * * * I suppose you could get under that street light and read. * * * You could see the stop light from the top of the hill out here at Broad as far as that is concerned. That is seven blocks back. You could see the light that far. This particular signal light burned night and day. * * * I never see the signal lights out at Church and Franklin."

The evidence tended to show that the traffic post or signal structure with which plaintiff's intestate collided was about three feet around at the base and ten feet high, and on each side of the base were the words "Drive to the right." This signal device was erected in the center of the intersection of Church and Franklin streets. It carried four iron bars which supported on the top thereof a four-way three-color electric traffic signal light. The lights at other street intersections in the vicinity were swinging street lights suspended above the intersection, and the plaintiff contended that the base of the traffic signal was substantially the same color as the ground, and further that the fact that other street lights at intersections were suspended above the intersection tended to put the plaintiff's intestate off his guard as he approached the signal or traffic post at the intersection of Church and Franklin streets.

Issues of negligence, contributory negligence, and damages were submitted to the jury, and the issue of negligence was answered in the negative.

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