Court Opinion

ID: 9517131
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 00:04:54.161361+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:43:31.252346
License: Public Domain

LAWRENCE G. CRAHAN, Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent. Under Illinois law, Bi-State had completely discharged its duty as a common carrier at the time the accident occurred. Even if it initially discharged the Plaintiff in an arguably unsafe place, Plaintiff had reached a place of safety where he was in no danger of being struck by Mr. Crowell’s truck. Had Plaintiff simply waited for the traffic to clear, he could have safely crossed Caseyville Road, which was lightly traveled at the time of day when the accident occurred. Therefore Bi-State’s conduct was not the proximate cause of the accident. Moreover, because the verdict director would have permitted the jury to impose liability for breach of a duty Bi-State did not have under Illinois law, it was an improper roving commission.
*297The bus on which Plaintiff was a passenger was not a school bus. It was a twenty-four foot passenger bus which carried passengers on a specified route for a standard fare. Passengers were discharged from the bus at designated bus stops, at stop signs or at locations along the route expressly requested by the passenger if the bus driver felt he could safely do so.
Plaintiff had been taking this particular bus for several weeks and, at that time of the morning, was usually the only passenger. Driver recalled that the first time he had Plaintiff as a passenger, he simply pulled the cord without saying anything to indicate where he wanted to get off, so Driver proceeded to the intersection of Caseyville Road and Morrison Road, where there is a stop sign. At one time, the intersection had a sign designating it as a bus stop but the sign had been removed. From this location, Plaintiff would have to either walk northbound on Casey-ville Road just under a half mile to a service road leading to the school or walk about 800 feet east on Morrison Road to the front entrance to the school. The school is in a largely rural area and there are no curbs or sidewalks along Caseyville Road.
Thereafter, Plaintiff would specifically request the driver to stop about 800 feet sooner, where the service road leading to the school intersected with the east side of Caseyville Road. Because the scheduled bus route carried the bus southbound on Caseyville Road and the bus could only discharge passengers on the right side of the road, the driver would discharge the Plaintiff, at his request, on the west side of Caseyville Road, on the shoulder, and Plaintiff would then cross Caseyville Road and proceed to school on the service road. A streetlight is located on the north side of the service road across from the location Driver would typically discharge Plaintiff.
Driver testified that on the morning in question, he dropped Plaintiff off in the usual location across from the service road. He looked in his mirror, saw that Plaintiff was clear of the door and walking on the shoulder toward the rear of the bus and toned his attention to merging back into traffic. He never saw or heard the accident and continued on his normal route.
Mr. Aburto (“Eyewitness”) had a somewhat different version, although as discussed below, the differences are immaterial. According to Eyewitness, he was following the bus down Caseyville Road when it activated its flashers and stopped to discharge Plaintiff. Eyewitness stopped his vehicle about 30 feet behind the bus, which he indicated discharged Plaintiff about 45-50 feet south of where the Driver said he discharged him. He said conditions were between light and dark; headlights were on but one wouldn’t need a flashlight to see. The bus was completely on the paved portion of the road. He saw Plaintiff exit the bus. As to Plaintiff’s actions thereafter, Eyewitness testified:
Q. Okay. And what did he do as he got out of the bus?
A. Just walked behind the bus.
Q. All right. Did he walk — can you describe the pace that he walked? Did he first walk along the side?
A. Yes, walked on the side of the bus and then came behind the bus.
Q. Did he walk along the pavement or on the grass?
A. He was walking on the grass.
Q. Did he, as he walked along the grass, was he walking at a fast pace or a slow pace or a normal pace?
A. I’d say a normal pace.
Eyewitness testified that as Plaintiff reached the back of the bus and began to cross, the bus started moving forward. *298Plaintiff looked at Eyewitness until he was about halfway across the southbound lane, then looked straight ahead and quickened his pace. He never looked to the right and was struck by Mr. Crowell’s vehicle about 1½ paces into the northbound lane.
In its first point, Bi-State maintains that the relationship of carrier and passenger had terminated when Plaintiff safely got off the bus and proceeded to walk on the grass shoulder off the roadway and that it therefore owed Plaintiff no duty under Illinois law at the time the accident occurred. Under Illinois law, the existence of a duty is a matter of law to be determined by the court. Urbas v. Saintco, Inc., 264 Ill.App.3d 111, 201 Ill.Dec. 782, 636 N.E.2d 1214, 1223 (1994). Recovery under a negligence theory requires the existence of a duty to conform to a certain standard of conduct to protect another from an unreasonable risk of harm. Id. Bi-State concedes that, as a common carrier, it owes its passengers the highest degree of care as they are leaving a bus and that the duty continues until the passenger has a reasonable opportunity to reach a place of safety. Crutchfield v. Yellow Cab Co., 189 Ill.App.3d 1091, 137 Ill.Dec. 200, 545 N.E.2d 961, 963 (1989). The passenger to whom the duty of care is owed is one who is in the act of boarding upon, is upon, or is in the act of alighting from, the carrier’s vehicle. Katamay v. Chicago Transit Authority, 53 Ill.2d 27, 289 N.E.2d 623, 625 (1972) (citing Illinois Pattern Jury Instructions-Civil (2d ed.1971), No. 100.09).
However,
[t]he duty to select a safe place for passengers to board or alight from street cars does not require the carrier to protect such passengers from obvious street dangers, such as those which arise from the operation of other vehicles on the street or from ordinary obstructions, defects, or unevenness of the surface of the street, at the place where the car is stopped. A fortiori, the carrier is not required to exercise a high, or the highest, degree of care to prevent injury to an alighting passenger by reason of conditions existing on the surface of the street at the point where he alights.
Kiesel v. Chicago Transit Authority, 6 Ill.App.2d 13, 126 N.E.2d 170, 172 (1955) (quoting 13 C.J.S. Section 733, pp. 1378-79).
In Crutchfield, the injured party, as in this case, was a student riding a regular city bus on a scheduled route to attend a function at her school. 137 Ill.Dec. 200, 545 N.E.2d at 962. The bus left her off at a designated bus stop in the middle of the block across the street from the school. Id. The bus stop was in a vacant, unimproved area except for streetlights and fencing. Id. There was no crosswalk or traffic signal. Id. The roadway consisted of two lanes of traffic in either direction divided by a median. Id. The student stepped off the bus and walked around the front of the bus where she was struck by a taxi cab in the adjacent lane. Id. In affirming summary judgment for the bus company, the court held that once the student safely disembarked from the bus, the bus company had fully performed its duty and no longer had a duty to exercise a higher standard of care. Id. at 963. The court further rejected the plaintiffs contention that the bus company could be held liable because the bus obstructed the student’s view of traffic in the adjacent lane. Id. Holding that there was no duty to immediately move the bus to permit a clear view of the roadway, the court observed that the bus company had no duty to protect its passengers from obvious street dangers. Id. (citing Kiesel).
Similarly, in Mitchell v. City of Chicago, 221 Ill.App.3d 1017, 164 Ill.Dec. 506, 583 *299N.E.2d 60 (1991), the court affirmed summary judgment in favor of the bus company in an action by a passenger who was struck by a car while crossing the street from a mid-block bus stop in order to catch an elevated train for which he held a transfer. Id. at 61. Despite the fact that the passenger had purchased a transfer to ride on a train also operated by the same company and was proceeding directly from one conveyance to the other, the court held that the carrier’s duty to exercise the highest decree of care was suspended once it discharged the passenger at the intermediate point and that it owed the passenger no duty to protect him from obvious street dangers. Id. at 62. (citing Crutchfield and Kiesel).
Plaintiff dismisses Crutchfield and Mitchell on the grounds that, in both cases, the passengers were discharged at a designated bus stop. Aside from the presumed presence of a sign designating the area as a bus stop, there is little to distinguish the location where Plaintiff was discharged in this case from the location described in Crutchfield as “vacant and unimproved except for streetlights, fencing and a service building.” 137 Ill.Dec. 200, 545 N.E.2d at 962. In any event, Sims v. Chicago Transit Authority, 4 Ill.2d 60, 122 N.E.2d 221 (1954), cited by Plaintiff, establishes that it is immaterial whether the place of discharge is a designated bus stop. All that Illinois law requires is that the location be one in which the passenger is in no immediate danger from traffic in adjacent lanes.
In Sims, the plaintiff was a passenger on a southbound streetcar which stopped behind 15 other streetcars due to an accident on a street ahead, although southbound vehicular traffic to the right of the streetcar was moving freely. 122 N.E.2d at 222. The place the streetcar came to a stop was about 1 1/3 blocks north of the regular stop. Id. The plaintiff got off the streetcar at the front and crossed between the streetcar and the one ahead in order to cross to the east side of the street. Id. The plaintiff stopped between the streetcars when suddenly a northbound streetcar approached at a speed of 20 miles per hour without sounding any warning. Id. The plaintiff threw her hands in the air and screamed. When she did so, she was struck on the wrist by a steel ventilator projecting from the northbound train and was knocked to the ground, causing severe injuries. Id. at 222-23. The plaintiff argued that there was no reasonably safe way to proceed, that her status as a passenger therefore continued until she had a reasonable opportunity to reach a place of safety and that the defendant owed her the highest degree of care. Id. at 223-24. The defendant maintained, despite the fact that the plaintiff would have to cross either the southbound lane of vehicular traffic or the northbound lanes of streetcar and vehicular traffic, she was discharged from the streetcar in a place of safety where she would not have been hit had she remained there and consequently its duty was fully performed. Id. at 224. The Illinois Supreme Court held that, although the place where the plaintiff was discharged was not unequivocally safe, it was as reasonably safe as circumstances permitted. Id. Accordingly, the court held that the plaintiff ceased to be a passenger and that the defendant only owed her a duty of ordinary care. Id.1
*300Likewise in this case, Bi-State discharged Plaintiff in an area that was as reasonably safe as the circumstances permitted. The uncontroverted evidence establishes that Plaintiff safely alighted from the bus and he was observed to be walking normally on the grass beside the road, where he was in no danger from traffic on Caseyville Road. At that point, Plaintiff ceased being a passenger and Bi-State’s duty toward Plaintiff was fully discharged.
The other cases cited by Plaintiff are clearly distinguishable. Katamay, supra, involved a fall which occurred on the defendant’s elevated train platform when the plaintiffs shoe became stuck in a space between the wooden planks as she was alighting a train. Pharr v. Chicago Transit Authority, 123 Ill.App.3d 205, 78 Ill.Dec. 634, 462 N.E.2d 753 (1984) was a suit by a passenger who fell when a bus allegedly started to move as she was in the process of alighting. Miskunas V. Chicago Transit Authority, 42 Ill.App.3d 202, 355 N.E.2d 738 (1976) involved a claim by a passenger who fell as she alighted from a bus and was based on violation of a municipal ordinance requiring busses to load and discharge passengers no more than 18 inches from the curb. None of these cases has any application to the facts presented in this appeal.
Plaintiff urges he nevertheless made a submissible case because Driver admitted he did not discharge Plaintiff in a safe place. This is a mischaracterization of Driver’s testimony. Driver testified that he discharged the Plaintiff in a lighted area with a shoulder wide enough to accommodate the bus immediately across the road from the area where the service road intersected Caseyville Road. On cross-examination, Driver testified as follows:
Q. And you knew that when he got on the bus that he was going to get off at Morrison or, excuse me, at the rear entrance to the school?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. How did he — if you knew that, if you knew he was going to get off at the rear entrance to the school, did he have to tell you? Did he have to request a stop?
A. Yes, sir. He’d have to.
Q. Still have to?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Or else you’d take him down to Morrison?
A. I would have took him down to Morrison, yes, sir.
Q. You require that every time he gets on?
A. Yes, sir. That’s regular procedure.
Q. Even though you knew where he would get off, you wouldn’t just stop there?
A. No, not unless he requested it.
Q. Is it possible, sir, that morning that he didn’t say soon enough, “Let me off there,” and you went by it?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. That’s possible, isn’t it?
A. That’s possible.
Q. And then you stopped further up the road towards Morrison, right?
A. No, sir. I would have stopped at the stop sign, because that’s wooded area and ditches over on that side.
Q. In other words, you think it’s inappropriate to let somebody off further up the road?
A. Yes.
Q. You shouldn’t let somebody off up here where [Eyewitness] says you stopped, is that right?
A. What do you mean?
Q. Do you recall being here when [Eyewitness] testified?
*301A. Yes, sir.
Q. Did you see when he put that purple push pin in for your bus?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Do you feel that that would be an inappropriate place to stop as a bus driver of all your years of experience because there is no shoulder there for them to walk?
A. Yes. But I stopped back here.
Q. I understand that. I asked you if that’s an inappropriate place to stop.
A. Yes, sir.
MR. WHALEY: Your honor, let me object. He’s not finished with his answer.
THE COURT: Ask him a question, give him a chance to answer.
Q. (By Mr. Gault) Answer the question again, sir?
A. Yes, sir, I wouldn’t have stopped there.
Q. But that’s not safe, is it?
A. No, it’s not.
Q. It’s not safe because the boy would have to get out and walk across in the dark, right?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. And he’d have to cross that lane of traffic oncoming?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. And that’s 45-miles-an-hour, isn’t it?
A. Yes, it is.
Q. And that’s unsafe?
A. Yes.
Q. And he wouldn’t have reached a place of safety till he got to the other side of the road?
A. Yes.
Plaintiff claims that this exchange establishes that the place Driver discharged him was not a place of safety and that Bi-State’s duty to Plaintiff therefor continued until Plaintiff reached the place of safety identified by Driver, which was the other side of the road. This argument is untenable for a number of reasons.
In the first place, wherever Driver discharged Plaintiff, it was not in an area with “no shoulder” as assumed in counsel’s questions. Both Driver and Eyewitness observed Plaintiff walking normally on the grass well clear of the bus. Had he simply remained there and waited for traffic to cle.ar before crossing the road, he was in no danger from traffic on Caseyville Road.2 Therefore, as a matter of Illinois law, he had reached a place of safety and was no longer a passenger. Sims, supra; Crutchfield, supra; Mitchell, supra.
Secondly, to extend Bi-State’s duty based on the fact that Plaintiff would have to cross Caseyville Road would impose on Bi-State a duty to protect Plaintiff from obvious street dangers — a duty categorically rejected in Crutchfield and Mitchell.
Third, whether Bi-State had a duty toward Plaintiff under the evidence is a question of law to be determined by the court, not a matter of driver’s opinion or a matter for determination by the jury. In each of the cases cited in this opinion, the trial court and, on review, the Illinois Court of Appeals or the Illinois Supreme Court determined for itself what was a place of safety and thus the point at which the Plaintiff could be deemed to be no longer a passenger to whom the carrier owed a duty. The issue for the jury, where the facts were disputed, was the *302factual issue of whether the Plaintiff had reached the place of safety determined by the court. If the evidence was in conflict as to whether the Plaintiff had yet reached what the court considered the place of safety, the issue was for the jury. If the undisputed facts showed the Plaintiff to be clear of the bus or streetcar and in a place where they were out of the path of moving traffic, the carrier’s duty owed to the Plaintiff as a passenger was held to be extinguished as a matter of law. In this case the uncontroverted evidence showed Plaintiff to be walking normally on the grass well clear of the bus. Accordingly, he was no longer a passenger and Bi-State’s duty was extinguished as a matter of law.
Finally, to define Bi-State’s duty in the manner Plaintiff proposes would, as a practical matter, impose on Bi-State a duty it could not reasonably be expected to discharge. Bi-State was not operating a school bus. Once Plaintiff got off the bus, Driver had no lawful authority to direct how or when he should cross the street. Indeed, Driver could well be found to have extended Bi-State’s duty beyond that imposed by Illinois law if he attempted to do so. Because Bi-State was not operating a school bus, Driver likewise had no authority to require opposing or overtaking traffic to stop to facilitate Plaintiffs safe passage. Thus, because the bus can only discharge passengers to the right-hand side of the road, the only way Bi-State could safely discharge Plaintiffs proposed duty to see him safely to the other side of the road would be to deviate from its established route by turning into the service road or finding a place to reverse direction and proceed northbound on Caseyville Road. Such duty would turn the notion of common carriage on its head. Under Illinois law, under no circumstances could a carrier be held to a duty to see passengers safely to their destination on the other side of the road from the place of discharge. Bi-State had fully discharged its duty to Plaintiff and was entitled to judgment as a matter of law.
Although extended discussion would serve no useful purpose, Bi-State was also entitled to judgment because the evidence does not support a finding that its conduct in discharging the Plaintiff where it did was the proximate cause of his injuries. Under Illinois law, a proximate cause is one that produces injury through a natural and continuous sequence of events unbroken by any effective intervening cause. In re Estate of Elfayer, 325 Ill.App.3d 1076, 258 Ill.Dec. 892, 757 N.E.2d 581, 587 (2001). In this case, Plaintiffs injuries are solely the result of his decision to cross the road when he did and to do so without checking for northbound traffic. There is no evidence whatsoever of any condition existing at the place Plaintiff was discharged which would have compelled him to cross the road immediately as opposed to waiting until the bus drove away so he could see the northbound lane. Bi-State had no control or right to control the timing or manner in which Plaintiff crossed the road. If Bi-State was negligent in discharging him where it did, such negligence cannot as a matter of law be the proximate cause of him being struck by a car in the northbound lane. See Pharr v. Chicago Transit Authority, 220 Ill.App.3d 509, 163 Ill.Dec. 211, 581 N.E.2d 162, 168-69 (1991) (No evidence that stopping bus at unauthorized location was proximate cause at injury allegedly caused by bus moving as passenger alighted); Arbogast v. Fedorchak, 44 Ill.App.2d 160, 194 N.E.2d 382, 386-87 (1963) (No evidence that bus blocking crosswalk was proximate cause of injury to passenger who made no attempt to use crosswalk).
Finally, assuming for the sake of argument Plaintiff made a submissible case, the *303verdict director was an improper roving commission. The verdict director instructed the jury to return a verdict for Plaintiff if it found that Bi-State “failed to discharge Bryant Moore, Jr., in a safe place.” Given Driver’s testimony set forth above, the jury could well have concluded that a safe place would be across the road or that where he was discharged was unsafe because he had to cross the road. Yet, as discussed above, under Illinois law Bi-State had no duty to protect Plaintiff from the danger inherent in crossing the street. Because the instruction submitted would permit the jury to impose liability for breach of a duty Bi-State did not have, it was an improper roving commission.

. Although the court found the plaintiff did not make a submissible case for breach of the defendant's duty to her as a passenger, the plaintiff was ultimately held to have made a submissible case against the defendant for negligence in the operation of the northbound streetcar.

. There is also no evidence of any impediment which would have prevented Plaintiff from walking 50 feet to the north, which would have put him directly opposite the streetlight according to Eyewitness’s testimony. Although it was dark, the path would presumably have been illuminated by Eyewitness’s headlights, which were on.