Jensen v. Fish
Jensen v. Fish
Opinion of the Court
The plaintiffs, as husband and wife, brought an action against the defendants to recover damages for personal injuries sustained by the plaintiff wife in an automobile accident. The plaintiffs recovered a judgment and the defendants have appealed under the new method.
In the charging part of their complaint, the plaintiffs aver that at the time of the accident they were traveling in a Ford sedan in the public road leading from San Jose to Oakland; that the defendants were operating a certain automobile bus; that at the time of the accident the defendants so carelessly, negligently, and unskillfully drove, operated, and ran said automobile bus that said bus collided with and struck the Ford sedan and forced, crowded, and knocked it and the occupants thereof off the road. In support of their pleading, evidence was introduced by the plaintiffs to the effect that the defendants’ bus approached from the rear at a speed estimated, by different witnesses, at from thirty to thirty-seven miles an hour; that the driver gave no signal of warning; that on meeting up with the Ford sedan the driver of the bus turned to the left, and, when immediately ahead of the Ford sedan, swerved' the bus to the right at an angle estimated at from sixty to seventy degrees, and that the Ford sedan, although at that time traveling with its left wheels on the roadbed proper and its right wheels on the right-hand shoulder, swerved still more to the right and later turned over in a ditch on the right-hand side. The jury returned a general verdict and certain special verdicts. The general verdict was in favor of the plaintiffs and the special verdicts were as follows: (1) The defendants’ stage did not actually strike and knock plaintiffs’ automobile from the highway;
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(2) it did strike or come in contact with the plaintiffs’ car; (3) it did force plaintiffs’ automobile off the highway; and (4) it did crowd plaintiffs’ automobile off the highway.
The appellants contend that the driver of plaintiffs’ automobile was guilty of contributory negligence. This contention rests on the argument that the driver of the Ford sedan did not use the very best of judgment at the time he saw the automobile bus attempting to cross in front of him. The supreme court said in
Karr
v.
Parks,
40 Cal. 188, 193, “ . .'. it would be absurd to hold that even an adult person, in time of imminent danger, is negligent, unless he takes every precaution that a .careful calculation afterward will show he might have taken.” That case was recently cited with approval in
Shupe
v.
Rodolf,
185 Cal. 371, [197 Pac. 57]. Moreover, looking at the record at this time, many months after the accident, we are unable to see that the driver of the Ford sedan did anything he should not have done, or omitted to do anything he should have done.
We find no error whatsoever in the record. The judgment is affirmed.
Langdon, P. J., and Nourse, J., concurred.
Reference
- Full Case Name
- ALMA A. JENSEN Et Al., Respondents, v. FRED W. FISH Et Al., Appellants
- Cited By
- 2 cases
- Status
- Published