Case Name: Harris, Appellant, v. DeFelice
Court: Supreme Court of Pennsylvania
Jurisdiction: Pennsylvania
Decision Date: 1954-11-15
Citations: 379 Pa. 469
Docket Number: Appeals, Nos. 277 and 278
Parties: Harris, Appellant, v. DeFelice.
Judges: Before Stearns, Jones, Chidsey, Musmanno and Arnold, JJ.
Reporter: Pennsylvania State Reports
Volume: 379
Pages: 469–482

Head Matter:
Harris, Appellant, v. DeFelice.
Argued October 7, 1954.
Before Stearns, Jones, Chidsey, Musmanno and Arnold, JJ.
November 15, 1954:
James C. Evans, with him Evans, Ivory & Evans, for plaintiff, appellant.
Con F. McGregor, for defendant, appellee.
Kim Darragh, for defendant, appellee.

Opinion:
Opinion by
Me. Justice Chidsey,
This action in trespass was instituted by the plaintiff, Eugene N. Harris, to recover damages for injuries suffered by him when struck by defendant Attilo DeFelice's automobile after alighting from the defendant Pittsburgh Railways Company's street car. During the course of the trial a compulsory nonsuit was entered in favor of the corporate defendant. The jury failed to agree upon a verdict as to the individual defendant and was discharged. Following their discharge the plaintiff filed a motion to take off the judgment of compulsory nonsuit and the individual defendant filed a motion for judgment in his favor upon the whole record, pursuant to the Act of April 20, 1911, P. L. 70, 12 PS §684. After argument the court en bane refused plaintiff's motion and granted the individual defendant's motion. From the judgments thereupon entered, plaintiff appeals.
In reviewing the record we will consider the facts and the reasonable inferences therefrom in a light most favorable to the plaintiff as we are required to do: Jones v. Carney, 375 Pa. 32, 99 A. 2d 462. Thus viewed, the following factual situation is presented.
On November 17, 1949, at about two A.M. the plaintiff was a passenger on the corporate defendant's street car which was proceeding in an easterly direction on Freeport Road in the Borough of Sharpsburg, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. The night was dark and hazy and a light rain was falling. Plaintiff informed the operator of the street car that he wanted to go to the Dixie Drive Inn. Plaintiff was discharged directly across the street from the inn on the southerly side of the highway, which admittedly was not a regular car stop. At this particular point the highway is about 50 feet wide and runs generally east and west. The defendant transportation company maintains a single track generally in this area, but at the place where plaintiff was put down there is, for a short distance, a double track, allowing street cars operating in different directions to pass each other. Freeport Road is bordered on the south by a retaining wall owned by the Pennsylvania Railroad Company. There is an elevated space running along the base of this wall, between it and the curb of the highway sufficient in width to permit a person to stand thereon.
After alighting from the street car, the plaintiff stood on this space and waited until the car started again before entering the cartway. After the street car moved forward he then proceeded to cross the street. When plaintiff reached the middle of the road, he hesitated or stopped for a second, looked to his right, and having observed no traffic approaching from that direction, he walked on. After he was a couple of steps beyond the middle of the highway he saw the headlights of the individual defendant's automobile which was approaching from the right, according to plaintiff's estimate, 160 or 170 feet away. Plaintiff continued across the highway, testifying that he was about three-fourths of the way across, when he was struck by the defendant's automobile and hurled a distance of from 25 to 30 feet, suffering a fracture of his right leg, his right wrist and one rib, together with abrasions and contusions. The automobile of the defendant was damaged on the left side of the hood and front grille.
Considering first the liability of the defendant carrier, the applicable law is clear. A common carrier owes a duty to its passengers not only to exercise a high degree of care and diligence in transporting them to their destination but also in affording them a reasonable opportunity to alight and pass out of danger: O'Malley v. Laurel Line Bus Co., 311 Pa. 251, 254, 166 A. 868; Brown v. Beaver Valley Motor Coach Company et al., 365 Pa. 578, 581, 76 A. 2d 403; Brown v. Ambridge Yellow Cab Company, 374 Pa. 208, 97 A. 2d 377. The mere fact that a street car discharges its passengers at an unusual stop does not in itself prove negligence: Hoffman v. Philadelphia Transportation Co., 369 Pa. 212, 215, 85 A. 2d 144; Low v. Harrisburg Railways Co., 290 Pa. 365, 371, 138 A. 852. It is only, when a passenger is mistakenly led to alight at a manifestly dangerous place which is not the usual stopping place that a carrier may be held liable for any injuries sustained by the passenger: See Carroll v. Pittsburgh, 368 Pa. 436, 440, 84 A. 2d 505.
The controlling question, therefore, is whether the defendant traction company discharged the plaintiff at a manifestly dangerous place. It is the plaintiff's position that the place of discharge was obviously perilous because there was no place to stand in safety on the southerly side of the street. The only evidence before the jury concerning the safety of the space beyond the curb on that side of the street was plaintiff's statement that "If I stayed where I was, a car might have come down the other way and hit me, because there was nothing there but a little curb." The only evidence regarding the size of the space between the retaining wall and the curb was testimony by one of plaintiff's witnesses, Frank A. Cefola, to the effect that just about one person could stand there.
Under the testimony it is difficult to conceive how liability could be imposed on the defendant corporation. The plaintiff himself had stood on this space at the foot of the retaining wall for an interval before committing himself to the cartway. Even apart from witness Cefola's testimony, the exhibits demonstrate that plaintiff's statement that he might have been hit was a conclusion on his part, unsubstantiated by the physical facts and purely a matter of conjecture. The only conceivable way that plaintiff would be endangered if he remained where he was standing would be the wholly fortuitous circumstance of an automobile leaving the highway at that point.
Most of the cases relied upon by the plaintiff are factually dissimilar from the instant one in that the dangerous conditions giving rise to liability were due to the presence of mounds of earth, an excavation, a pile of building stones or other extraordinarily hazardous conditions. O'Malley v. Laurel Line Bus Co., supra, the case principally relied upon by the plaintiff, is clearly inapposite. In that case a motorman on a dark, stormy night discharged a passenger at a place other than the regular bus stop, in the middle of the street, 16 feet from the curb. The plaintiff was struck by an automobile immediately after he stepped from the bus. Since the passenger had no opportunity to reach a point of safety, the facts supported a finding of negligence. In the instant case the defendant carrier did all that it was required to do under the law since the plaintiff was afforded and did reach a position of safety. That he subsequently, of his own accord, abandoned that site for one more perilous would not stamp tbe entire area as a manifestly dangerous place under the decisions of this Court. There being no evidence of any actionable negligence by the defendant carrier, a nonsuit was proper.
Turning next to the question of granting the individual defendant's motion for judgment on the whole record, our only inquiry is whether the record discloses a case in which binding instructions should have been given for the defendant. Where the evidence presents a factual issue properly submissible to the jury, judgment on the whole record cannot be entered under the Act of 1911: Grande v. Wooleyhan Transport Co., 353 Pa. 535, 46 A. 2d 241; Shapiro v. Philadelphia Electric Company, 342 Pa. 416, 21 A. 2d 26. After a careful scrutiny of the record we are of the opinion that irrespective of the question of defendant's negligence, the testimony of the plaintiff establishes such negligence on his part that the court was bound to declare it as a matter of law. A pedestrian who traverses a street between intersections is required to exercise a higher degree of care for his own safety, while motorists are correspondingly held to a lesser degree of care and are not obliged to have their vehicles under instant control: Rucheski v. Wisswesser et al., 355 Pa. 400, 50 A. 2d 291; Ebersole v. Beistline, 368 Pa. 12, 82 A. 2d 11. The plaintiff admits that he was crossing between intersections, but contends that this would not convict, him of negligence as a matter of law..That this is a correct statement of the law can hardly be denied, at this laté date, but it is equally, well settled that if a pedestrian voluntarily . walks into the path of an oncoming vehicle; when: it is. dangerously near, he is barred by his negligence from any recovery: Danks v. Pittsburgh Railways Company, 328 Pa. 356, 195 A. 16; Watson v. Lit Brothers, 288 Pa. 175, 135 A. 631.
Plaintiff's own testimony leads to the inevitable conclusion that he saw the defendant's automobile approaching and nevertheless proceeded rashly in disregard of an obvious and imminent danger. Illustrative in this regard are the following excerpts from plaintiff's testimony: "A. No, I didn't see it then [when he was in the middle of the street]. I took a couple of steps and seen it and thought I might as well keep going the way I was going. I thought I had a chance... I was just about in the center of the rails when I seen the headlights coming the other way. I saw the car come and I thought I could make it and I kept on going. . . A. No sense me starting back the other way. I thought I had a chance to make it across. I didn't think he was coming fast and I started across. Q. How did you start, continue to walk? A. Walked faster. Q. Did you at any time run? A. I tried to run. I got excited. Everybody would try that. . Q. Do I understand you, Mr. Harris, that when you saw this car coming you decided to take a chance to get across in front of it? A. That's right. . . Q. Is it a fair statement, Mr. Harris, when you say it all happened so fast, that you came from behind the street car and after you got a couple of steps past the center of the street you saw the car, decided to take a chance to get in front of it and the accident happened, is that right? A. That is right.". Plaintiff's own conduct convicts him of contributory negligence for by gambling on the risk of injury he voluntarily placed himself in a position of peril.
Judgments affirmed. .
See: Brown v. Beaver Valley Motor Coach Company et al., supra; Scherer v. Philadelphia Rapid Transit Co. et al., 295 Pa. 199; McCollum v. Pittsburgh Railways Company (No. 1), 51 Pa. Superior Ct. 637.
In this connection, .the' plaintiff also testified that he was ". . . no judge of speed at all.".