Adams Express Co. v. Adams
Adams Express Co. v. Adams
Opinion of the Court
Within a few feet of the southeast corner of St. Mary’s avenue and Twenty-Sixth street in the city of Omaha, the plaintiff below, who was then about 18 years of age, while he was riding a bicycle toward the east along the south side of St. Mary’s avenue, collided with the south shaft of a covered wagon to which a horse that one of the servants of the defendant was driving toward the west on that street was harnessed. Adams was seriously injured by the collision, and by his next friend he sued the company for negligence, and recovered a judgment.
The suggestion is made in this court for the first time that the court below was without jurisdiction of the action, because the requisite diversity of citizenship does not appear from the record. But the plaintiff alleged in his original petition which he filed in the state court that the Adams Express Company was a corporation organized under the laws of New York. The defendant in its petition for removal averred that the plaintiff and his next friend were citizens and residents of the state of Nebraska, and that the defendant company was a corporation or joint-stock company created under the laws of the state of New York. It subsequently filed an answer in which it expressly admitted that it was a corporation or joint-stock company organized and existing under the laws of the state of New York. Under a familiar rule of construction this was an admission that the Adams Express Company was a corporation as alleged in the original petition, and by these pleadings the requisite diversity of citizenship sufficiently appeared. The jurisdiction of a federal court may not be renounced or avoided where the facts requisite to confer it appear either directly, or by just inference, from any part of the record. Howe v. Howe & Owen Company, 154 Fed. 820, 822, 83 C. C. A. 536, 538.
At the close of the evidence the court below refused to grant a request of the defendant to instruct the jury to return a verdict in its. favor, and its counsel insist that this ruling was error (a) because the act of the defendant’s driver in turning into Twenty-Sixth street and the ensuing collision was not the proximate cause of the plaintiff’s injury; (b) because there was no substantial evidence that his injury could have been reasonably anticipated from his act by the driver by any ordinary forecast; (c) because the negligence of the plaintiff in riding his bicycle at the rate of five or six miles an hour toward the company’s wagon, which he saw coming towards him, without taking suitable precautions to avoid a collision, was the proximate catise of his injury; and (d) because if the plaintiff’s injury did not result proximately as a maker of law from his own negligence, it was caused by a mere accident. The facts disclosed by the evidence which are relevant
The driver testified that he saw the plaintiff approaching on his bicycle along the south side of the street when he was at least half a block distant. He also testified that he intended to turn into Twenty-Sixth street and to deliver a package upon that street. He knew that he was going to take his team into Twenty-Sixth street before he turned his horse toward that street, and the boy did not know it. The boy came on, and the driver turned his horse sharply to the south. The plaintiff might have inferred, doubtless lie would have inferred if the horse had continued in that direction, that the driver intended to take the team into Twenty-Sixth street, and he might and doubtless would have turned his bicycle to the left, and have safely passed the team on the north side. But before the horse had traveled many feet, the driver sharply turned him to the west and he proceeded on in that direction. The plaintiff was then near the horse and lie may have inferred, for that was a rational inference, that the driver intended to take the team on toward the west along St. Mary’s avenue. He rode on close to the line of the south curb to pass the team on the south side when, just as he was about to pass it, the driver again turned the horse suddenly to the south and the collision occurred. These facts present a substantial basis from which any man of ordinary intelligence and' prudence in the circumstances of this driver might, and probably would, have anticipated, and from which this driver ought to have foreseen, that a collision and injury were the natural and probable consequences of driving his team in such a zigzag, fluctuating, and erratic course in the face of an approaching bicycler whom he saw and whom he expected to pass him, and they were sufficient to sustain a verdict that the acts of the driver were negligent and were the proximate cause of the injury. This driver, with his knowledge that lie intended to turn his team into Twenty-Sixth street, and that the plaintiff was coming toward him along the south side of St. Mary’s avenue and was about to cross Twenty-Sixth street, owed this boy the duty to exercise ordinary care to avoid a collision. The full discharge of that duty required him to either keep his team out of the straight course, which be knew the plaintiff was pursuing, or by directing liis horse steadily in a direction that would cross the bicycler’s course, or by some other adequate signal, to give him reasonable warning that he intended to drive his team across the bicycler’s evident course and into Twenty-Sixth street. His direction of his team in its suddenly changing course failed to discharge this duty.
On the other hand, the evidence of the alleged contributory negligence of the plaintiff was not so plain and conclusive that any duty was
Finally, there was substantial evidence that the proximate cause of the injury was not a mere accident, because there was such evidence that the negligence of the defendant’s driver was its proximate cause.
Many objections were interposed by counsel for the plaintiff to the defendant’s exception and to its assignment of errors. These objections have not been considered, nor have the questions they present been decided, because the result of the case upon a consideration of the merits is the same that it would have been if those objections had been sustained. There was no error in the trial of the "case, and the judgment below must be affirmed.
It is so ordered.
Case-law data current through December 31, 2025. Source: CourtListener bulk data.