Case Name: DeLuca v. Manchester Laundry and Dry Cleaning Company, Inc., Appellant
Court: Supreme Court of Pennsylvania
Jurisdiction: Pennsylvania
Decision Date: 1955-03-14
Citations: 380 Pa. 484
Docket Number: Appeals, Nos. 282, 288 and 299
Parties: DeLuca v. Manchester Laundry and Dry Cleaning Company, Inc., Appellant.
Judges: Before Stern, O. J., Stearne, Jones, Bell, Chidsey and Mtjsmanno, JJ.
Reporter: Pennsylvania State Reports
Volume: 380
Pages: 484–499

Head Matter:
DeLuca v. Manchester Laundry and Dry Cleaning Company, Inc., Appellant.
March 14, 1955:
Argued January 11, 1955.
Before Stern, O. J., Stearne, Jones, Bell, Chidsey and Mtjsmanno, JJ.
Peter P. Zion, with him Leonard A. Green and Lynwood F. Blount, for defendant, appellant.
Maurice Freedman, with him Herbert H. Hadra and Robert H. Arronson, for plaintiff, appellant.
Howard R. Detweiler, with him Frank R. Ambler, for defendant, appellee.

Opinion:
Opinion by
Mr. Chief Justice Horace Stern,
The problem here presented concerns the determination of the proximate cause of the accident in suit.
Mifflin Street, in Philadelphia, is 26 feet wide from curb to curb. It is a one-way street open only for eastbound traffic. The business establishment of defend ant Manchester Laundry and Dry Cleaning Company, Inc., is situated on the north side of the street 72 feet east of 11th Street. A loading platform protrudes from the front of its property and extends over the sidewalk 4 feet 2 inches; the sidewalk itself is 12 feet wide. On May 29, 1953, the day of the accident, a truck of the Laundry Company, while the driver was engaged in loading it, was backed up to within a foot of this platform. As the truck was 18y2 feet in length it covered the remaining width of the sidewalk and extended an additional 11 feet 8 inches into the roadway, leaving a distance of approximately 14 feet 4 inches between the front of the truck and the south curb of the street. An automobile happened at the time to be parked along the curb on the south side but slightly to the east of the truck.
At about 7:30 in the morning plaintiff, Elvira De-Luca, walking westwardly on the north sidewalk and finding her passage blocked by the truck, stepped out into the roadway in order to proceed around it. The day was clear. She testified that she walked parallel to the side of the truck and at a distance from it of about 5 or 6 feet, that when she came to a line with the front of it she looked and saw an automobile approaching, that she took a step backward, "about a foot or so," but the automobile "came crooked," that is to say swerved.toward her and. struck her. She (together with her husband) brought suit to recover for her injuries against the Laundry Company and against Charles Chiardio who was the-driver óf the automobile. Chiardio's version of the accident was entirely differ- ent from that of • plaintiff; • He testified that he was traveling at the rate of only about 15 miles an hour, that he maintained a two-foot clearance as he passed in front of the-truck, that he did not change his course but .that plaintiff "came out .from alongside the.laun dry [truck] running or walking — I don't know whether she was running or walking, but she came in contact with the left front of my car and sprawled along the left side of the hood, . . ."; he stopped within half the length of his car.
The case was tried by the court without a jury. The trial judge found that Chiardio was not in any manner negligent and that his car did not swerve into the plaintiff; that plaintiff was guilty of a mistake of judgment but not of negligence in coming into contact with the car because she acted while in a perilous position; that the parking of defendant's truck was illegal and was the proximate cause of the accident. Accordingly he found in favor of defendant Chiardio but in favor of the plaintiff against the Manchester Laundry Company in the sum of (53,200. The court en banc dismissed exceptions filed by the Laundry Company to the finding against it, and by both the Laundry Company and the plaintiff to the finding for Chiardio, and entered judgments accordingly. There followed the present appeals by the Laundry Company and the plaintiff.
The court's findings of facts exculpating Chiardio from responsibility for the accident were entirely justified. The trial judge had to choose between the conflicting versions of the accident presented by Chiardio and the plaintiff, and his conclusion, affirmed as it was by the court en banc, must be accepted as a finality. But the appeal of the Laundry Company from the judgment against it must be sustained. In the first place, there is a question whether it was really guilty of a violation of the law in having its truck stand as it did while being loaded. It is true that section 1019(a) of The Vehicle Code of May 1,1929, P. L. 905, as amended, provides that "in no event shall any person park or leave standing any vehicle, whether attended or unattended, upon any highway, unless a clear and unob structed width of not less than fifteen (15) feet upon the main traveled portion of said highway opposite such standing vehicle shall be left for free passage of other vehicles thereon . . .", and that section 1020, as amended, provides that "No person shall park a vehicle, or permit it to stand, whether attended or unattended, upon a highway in any of the following places: . . . 9. on a sidewalk." But "Parking" is defined in section 102, as amended, as "The standing of a vehicle, . . . whether occupied or not, upon a highway otherwise than temporarily for the purpose and while actually engaged in loading or unloading, . . .". Accordingly it has frequently been held that it was not intended by the Code to prohibit merely temporary blockings of the highway in the course of the ordinary incidents of traffic or the reasonable necessities of business and industry : Henry v. S. Liebovitz & Sons, Inc., 312 Pa. 397, 401, 167 A. 304, 305, 306; Fritz, Administratrix, v. York Motor Express Co., 358 Pa. 398, 401, 402, 58 A. 2d 12, 13; Johnson, Administrator, v. Angretti, 364 Pa. 602, 606, 73 A. 2d 666, 668; Commonwealth v. Haley, 25 Del. Co. Rep. 290. In the present case there was no testimony whatever as to the length of time the truck was being loaded prior to the happening of the accident; it may have been in front of the Laundry Company's property only for a few minutes at most.
In the second place, even assuming, arguendo, that the Laundry Company was guilty of a violation of the provisions of the statute and therefore negligent per se, such negligence was not a ground of liability unless it was the proximate and efficient cause of the accident in question: Hayes v. Schomaker, 302 Pa. 72, 77, 152 A. 827, 829; Hutchinson v. Follmer Trucking Company, 333 Pa. 424, 427, 5 A. 2d 182, 183; Shakley v. Lee, 368 Pa. 476, 478, 84 A. 2d 322, 323; Purol, Inc., v. Great Eastern System, Inc., 130 Pa. Superior Ct. 341, 344, 345, 197 A. 543, 544, 545; Vunak v. Walters, 157 Pa. Superior Ct. 660, 662, 43 A. 2d 536, 537. This is because an act of negligence which creates merely a passive background or circumstance of an accident does not give rise to a right of recovery if the accident was in fact caused by an intervening act of negligence which is a superseding cause: Stone v. Philadelphia, 302 Pa. 340, 153 A. 550; Schwartz v. Jaffe, 324 Pa. 324, 332, 188 A. 295, 298; Kline v. Moyer and Albert, 325 Pa. 357, 191 A. 43; Ashworth v. Hannum, 347 Pa. 393, 397, 398, 32 A. 2d 407, 409; Venorick v. Revetta, 152 Pa. Superior Ct. 455, 33 A. 2d 655.
The question, then, is whether the parking of the Laundry Company's truck, even if it were a violation of the statute and therefore an act of negligence, was a proximate or only what the law regards as a remote cause of plaintiff's accident. The theory adopted by the court below was that the plaintiff was placed in a position of peril by reason of the blocking of the sidewalk and being compelled thereby to walk out into the roadway; therefore she was not guilty of negligence in what she did but only of an error of judgment. In our opinion the facts do not admit of such an interpretation. Except under unusual circumstances there is certainly no particular "peril" encountered by an adult person in walking into the roadway of a street, especially in the present case where the photographs in evidence show Mifflin Street to be a quiet, largely residential thoroughfare, with only one-way traffic. Without some act of negligence on the part of either the plaintiff or Chiardio no accident could or would have resulted, and the Laundry Company was not bound to anticipate such negligence: Polonofsky v. Dobrosky, 313 Pa. 73, 76, 169 A. 93, 94; Leoni v. Reinhard, 327 Pa. 391, 393, 394, 194 A. 490, 491. Accepting the facts as found by the court below it is clear that plaintiff, walking into the street at a distance of 5 or 6 feet from the side of the truck, proceeded incautiously beyond its front line and ran into Chiardio's car, which was already right upon her; her story that she stepped back and that Chiardio's car veered and swerved into her was rejected by the court. She was therefore guilty of an act of negligence which was the sole cause of the accident. Even if in fact she had tried to avoid the impending accident by stepping backward, the emergency which faced her was one due to her own lack of care in proceeding as she did into the center of the highway instead of remaining within the protection of the side of the truck until she saw that no vehicle was approaching; therefore she cannot successfully invoke the principle that an "error of judgment" is excusable if the situation which gives rise to it is not one of the person's own negligent creation.
In Kline v. Moyer and Albert, 325 Pa. 357, 191 A. 43, a truck was negligently parked on the highway in the dusk of a late afternoon. A car in which the plaintiff Avas a guest rider started to pass the standing truck when another automobile coming in the opposite direction swerved from the rear of the truck and struck plaintiff's car in a head-on collision. The question in the case was whether a cause of action could be maintained against the driver of the standing truck or whether his negligence had been superseded by that of the driver of the automobile which struck plaintiff's car. It was held that if the driver of the car saw and knew of the position of the standing truck and nevertheless thereafter proceeded negligently, with the result that the accident occurred, the original negligence of the driver of the truck had become a non-causal factor divested of legal significance; as to it the chain of causation had been broken and responsibility remained solely with the operator of the offending car. The applicable principle was formulated as follows: "Where a second actor has become aware of the existence of a potential danger created by the negligence of an original tortfeasor, and thereafter, by an independent act of negligence, brings about an accident, the first tortfeasor is relieved of liability, because the condition created by him was merely a circumstance of the accident and not its proximate cause." In the present case both Chiardio and the plaintiff saw the standing truck of the Laundry Company in plenty of time to guide their movements accordingly and Chiardio did, as the court found, operate his car with all proper care; plaintiff, however, by her own independent act of negligence, brought about the ensuing accident, so that it was her negligence, not the negligence of the Laundry Company (even assuming that there was such negligence) that was the proximate cause of the accident.
Ordinarily the question whether the negligence of a defendant is a proximate cause of the accident is for the fact-finding tribunal (Landis, Administratrix, v. Conestoga Transportation Company (No. 1), 349 Pa. 97, 100, 36 A. 2d 465, 466), but where the relevant facts are not in dispute and the remoteness of the causal connection between defendant's negligence and plaintiff's injury clearly appears from the evidence the question becomes one of law and, as such, is within the scope of appellate review: Rugart v. Keebler-Weyl Baking Co., 277 Pa. 408, 414, 121 A. 198, 200; Leoni v. Reinhard, 327 Pa. 391, 396, 194 A. 490, 492; Irwin Savings & Trust Company v. Pennsylvania R. R. Co., 349 Pa. 278, 283, 37 A. 2d 432, 434; Frisch v. Texas Company, 363 Pa. 619, 621, 622, 70 A. 2d 290, 291, 292; Roche v. Pennsylvania R. R. Co., 169 Pa. Superior Ct. 48, 57, 82 A. 2d 332, 337.
The judgment against defendant Manchester Laundry and Dry Cleaning Company, Inc., is reversed and judgment is here entered in its favor. The judgment in favor of defendant Charles Chiardio is affirmed.
Jinks v. Currie, 324 Pa. 532, 188 A. 356; Landis, Administratrix v. Conestoga Transportation Co. (No. 1), 349 Pa. 97, 36 A. 2d 465; Bricker v. Gardner, 355 Pa. 35, 48 A. 2d 209.
In Marchl v. Dowling & Co., Inc., 157 Pa. Superior Ct. 91, 41 A. 2d 427, relied upon by plaintiff, the victim of the accident was an unattended seven year old child, legally incapable of contributory negligence.
Polonofsky v. Dobrosky, 313 Pa. 73, 169 A. 93; Silfies, Administratrix, v. American Stores Company, 357 Pa. 176, 53 A. 2d 610; Thompson v. Gorman, 366 Pa. 242, 77 A. 2d 413; Community Fire Company v. Pennsylvania Power & Light Company, 92 Pa. Superior Ct. 304.