Green v. Los Angeles Terminal Railway Co.
Green v. Los Angeles Terminal Railway Co.
Opinion of the Court
This is a suit brought by the plaintiff to recover damages for the death of his wife, alleged to have been the result of the negligent operation of the defendant’s railroad. The plaintiff recovered judgment for the sum of $5,000 and costs; and the appeal is from the judgment, and from an order denying the defendant’s motion for new trial.
It is found by the court that at the time of the accident the defendant’s train “was being run and operated in a very dangerous and grossly negligent and careless manner, as to its rate of speed and failure to sound ordinary signals of warning,” and that the accident to the deceased was the result of the negligence of the defendant and its employees; “that before crossing or attempting to cross the defendant’s railroad track [the deceased] used ordinary care, and did what an ordinarily prudent person would have done under the circumstances”; and that she “did not by her own carelessness or negligence in any way contribute to said acci
The above facts are not disputed by the appellant’s counsel, except as to the rate of speed, the failure of the engineer to sound the signals required of him, and his failure to slacken speed until within ten or fifteen feet of the deceased. But on the last point the engineer’s own testimony is explicit to the same effect as stated in the finding, and as to the others it is admitted that the evidence is conflicting.
The facts found must therefore be taken as established. We do not understand that this is disputed by the appellant; but the point made is that the deceased, after stopping at the south line of the street and looking up the track for an approaching train, should have again looked and listened for the approaching train, and that, as a matter of law, her failure to do so in itself constituted negligence. But it is difficult to imagine on what principle this contention could be sustained, or, if it could, how it could be material. On the question of contributory negligence the burden of proof is on the defendant; and here there was absolutely no evidence of such negligence, except that she did not look up the track for an approaching train in passing from the south line of the street to the track. Certainly we cannot say that the inference of negligence from these facts is irresistible, or, as a matter of law, that they constituted negligence; and unless this can be said, the contention must fail. For, to set aside the finding of the court that there was no contributory negligence on the part of the plaintiff, “such negligence must affirmatively appear as a conclusion of law from the undisputed facts”: Schneider v. Market St. Ry. Co., 134 Cal. 482, 487, 66 Pac. 734 et seq. Indeed, in this case the evidence tended to show that the deceased took all the care
I advise that the judgment and order appealed from be affirmed.
We concur: Chipman, C.; Haynes, C.
For the reasons given in the foregoing opinion the judgment and order appealed from are affirmed.
Case-law data current through December 31, 2025. Source: CourtListener bulk data.