Fox v. McCormick
Fox v. McCormick
Opinion of the Court
The opinion of the court was delivered by
A collision occurred at the intersection of Tenth street and Morris avenue in Topeka, between a Ford car driven east on Tenth street by its owner, W. B. Fox, and a truck driven north on Morris avenue by an employee of 0. McCormick. Fox sued McCormick on the ground that the collision was due to the negligence of his driver and recovered a judgmént from which this appeal is taken.
A street-car track occupies the middle of Tenth street east of the place referred to and at that point turns south along Morris avenue, approaching the southeast corner of the intersection so closely that when a street car is standing on the curve an automobile driven north on the east side of Morris avenue has not room to pass between it and the curb. A street car was occupying that position at the time of the accident. There was a conflict of evidence as to which car ran into the other, but the verdict must be deemed for present purposes to establish the correctness of the plaintiff’s version of the affair, according to -which the collision occurred in this manner: The plaintiff’s Ford arrived at the intersection about the same time as the street car and continued straight ahead. The defendant’s truck swerved to the west to pass the street car and while continuing north on the west side of the intersection ran into the Ford after it had passed the middle line of Morris avenue.
“You are instructed that if you find from the evidence, that when the truck of the defendant reached the point in Morris avenue near the intersection of said avenue with Tenth street, that said truck could proceed no farther on the east side of the street on account of a street car obstructing the passage way on said east side of Morris avenue, that the person operating defendant’s truck would not be compelled to stop the said truck and wait until the street car moved so that he could proceed on the east side of the street; but that, under such circumstances, the person in charge of defendant’s truck would have the right to drive said truck to the west side of the street if necessary to pass said street car, and if in doing so, he exercised reasonable and ordinary care for the safety of others, he would not be guilty of negligence.”
The requested instruction is open to criticism as likely to be understood to mean that as a matter of law the defendant could not be required to stop until the street car had gone on but had an absolute right under any circumstances to proceed on the left side of the street. So far as the requested instruction was adapted to protect the defendant against being held liable merely because he had violated some general rule which was inapplicable because of exceptional conditions its place was sufficiently taken by the repeated statement in the course of the charge that no liability could be founded upon any unlawful manner of driving that did not contribute to the injury or constitute its proximate cause.
Thé judgment is affirmed.
Reference
- Full Case Name
- W. B. Fox, a Minor, by Carrie Fox, His Next Friend v. O. McCormick
- Cited By
- 6 cases
- Status
- Published
- Syllabus
- SYLLABUS BY THE COURT. 1. Negligence — Collision Between Motor Vehicles — Negligence Sufficiently Charged in Petition. Where a petition has not been attacked by motion its allegation that the defendant’s automobile was driven in a reckless and careless and negligent manner in violation of an ordinance designated by number and date of publication is sufficient to sustain proof of any manner of driv- . ing forbidden by such ordinance, at least where no prejudice to the defendant is shown to have been occasioned by such generality of statement. 2. Same — Ordinance Relating to Right of Way of Vehicles at Street Intersections. An ordinance giving'the right of way at a street intersection to the driver of the vehicle approaching from the right supersedes the old rule favoring whichever reaches the intersection in advance of the other. 3. Same — Automobile Collision at Street Intersection — Requested Instruction Properly Refused. In a case growing out of an automobile collision at a street intersection where the defendant’s progress on the right side of the street was stopped by a standing street car, an instruction to the effect that he had an absolute right to proceed on the left side, using due caution, is held to have been properly refused where the jury were told that no recovery could be had on account of any violation of .the law of the road which was not the proximate cause of the plaintiff’s injury. 4. Same — No “Quotient Verdict.” The rule applied that a verdict is not' vitiated by the fact that it is the same in amount as the average of the estimates of the individual jurors, where no agreement on the subject had been made in advance of the markings.