Wadsworth v. National Convoy & Trucking Co.
| Citation | 166 S.E. 898,203 N.C. 730 |
| Decision Date | 21 December 1932 |
| Docket Number | 533. |
| Parties | WADSWORTH et al. v. NATIONAL CONVOY & TRUCKING CO. |
| Court | United States State Supreme Court of North Carolina |
Appeal from Superior Court, Cabarrus County; MacRae, Special Judge.
Action by Mace L. Wadsworth and husband against the National Convoy & Trucking Company.
From a judgment of nonsuit, plaintiffs appeal.
Reversed.
Where more than one inference can be drawn from evidence of negligence, proximate cause of injury is for jury.
B. W Blackwelder, of Concord, for appellants.
J Laurence Jones, of Charlotte, and Hartsell & Hartsell, of Concord, for appellee.
This is an action for damages suffered by the feme plaintiff to her person and her property by reason of a collision of her car with a truck operated by the defendant. The case is here on appeal from a nonsuit granted at the close of the plaintiffs' evidence.
The collision occurred on May 8, 1931, at 7:15 in the evening. The plaintiffs were in a Buick coupé going on highway 15 from Concord to Charlotte. Four hundred yards south of the Jackson Training School the road curves to the right, "a long sweeping curve." The coupé was moving at the rate of forty miles an hour. The defendant's truck traveling in the direction of Concord came round the curve. It was about sixty-two feet long and was loaded with four new Ford cars its head and tail-lights were burning; as to whether there were side lights at the time of the accident the testimony is conflicting. The driver of the coupé thought it was an ordinary car.
In the center of the hard surface there was a black line six or seven inches wide. The evidence tended to show that the rear wheel of the truck was eighteen inches over the line on the wrong side of the road, and that the trailer extended from twelve to fifteen feet behind the rear wheel. The driver of the coupé testified that he could not "pull over and miss the rear end of the truck on account of a bad shoulder on the right"; also that, if he had been looking, he could not have seen that the wheel was over the line.
The defendant admits its own negligence, but contends that the contributory negligence of the plaintiffs bars recovery and that this position should be sustained as a matter of law. For the purpose of supporting its contention the defendant cites Davis v. Jeffreys, 197 N.C. 712, 150 S.E. 488; Scott v. Western Union Tel. Co., 198 N.C. 795, 153 S.E. 413, and other cases of similar...
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