Hope v. Southern Pennsylvania Traction Co.
Hope v. Southern Pennsylvania Traction Co.
Opinion of the Court
Opinion by
Plaintiffs, husband and wife, sued to recover damages for personal injuries sustained by Martha Hope, the wife, and for loss of a horse and damages to a wagon, the property of James Hope, the husband, the result of a collision between defendant’s car and plaintiffs’ wagon, plaintiffs alleging negligence on the part of the motorman operating defendant’s car. The jury rendered verdicts in favor of plaintiffs, and defendant appealed.
Mrs. Hope, one of the plaintiffs, was driving on a public highway a one-horse covered Dearborn wagon having two small glass inserts in the rear curtain for observing approaching vehicles from behind. Defendant’s railway tracks paralleled the highway on her right. Mrs. Hope testified that, on noticing a wagon and automobile approaching from the opposite direction, she looked back through the glass inserts, and, not seeing a car in sight, drove toward and close to the car tracks of defendant and had proceeded forty-five or fifty feet when her wagon was struck by one of defendant’s cars which approached without warning, the force of the contact turning the wagon completely around and throwing plaintiff to the ground, the car running approximately three hundred feet before being brought to a stop. A witness for plaintiff, a passenger on defendant’s car, stated the wagon was “side-swiped,” that the car approached at a speed of twenty-five or thirty miles an hour and ran about two hundred and fifty feet after the collision before stopping. The accident occurred on a steep hill, the surface portion of the roadway outside of the railway being merely of sufficient width to permit the passing of two vehicles. The motorman testified plaintiff’s wagon was in view a distance of three hundred feet from the point of the accident.
On the foregoing state of facts, the questions of negligence on the part of the motorman and contributory negligence of plaintiff were clearly for the jury. Plaintiff had a right to use the road and to turn toward or
The judgment is affirmed.
Reference
- Full Case Name
- Hope et ux. v. Southern Pennsylvania Traction Co.
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- 5 cases
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- Syllabus
- Negligence—Street railways—Car side-swiping wagon — Contributory negligence—Case for fury. 1. In an accident case, where it appeared plaintiff’s wagon was side-swiped by defendant’s electric car going at a high rate of speed, at a point where the roadway outside of the tracks was of sufficient width to permit the passing of two vehicles only, it was the motorman’s duty, with the wagon in full view in front of him, to anticipate that, in passing vehicles approaching in the opposite direction, plaintiff must necessarily drive close to the tracks, and he (the motorman) must not only give warning of his approach, hut also have his car under such control as the dangers of the situation seemed reasonably to require. 2. Plaintiff had a right to use the road and to turn towards or upon the tracks if necessity required, subject, however, to the duty of looking for approaching cars and taking proper precaution to avoid a collision, 3. In such case, the question of defendant’s negligence and plaintiff’s contributory negligence is for the jury.