Court Opinion

ID: 9755119
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 20:25:55.973398+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:28:03.008877
License: Public Domain

Dissenting Opinion by
Mr. Justice Musmanno :
On the evening of May 29, 1952, Adam Eckley of Kresgeville, Pennsylvania, returned to his home after his day’s work, ate his dinner, mowed the lawn and then, in accordance with a now well-established American custom, took his wife and small children out for an automobile ride. He drove several miles to Brodheadsville where at a roadside market he purchased flowers to take to the cemetery the following day, which was Memorial Day, and then started back for Kresgeville with his two small boys, Darel, 3 1/2 years of age, and Dale, aged 8, occupying the rear seat of the car with the flowers. While the car was travelling at a rate of 25 to 30 miles per hour, Dale cried out that his little brother Darel had fallen out of a suddenly-opened door. Eckley threw on his brakes and stopped within 48 feet of the spot where the child fell. At this moment, Eckley saw 200 to 250 feet away an automobile (later ascertained to be that of the defendant Travis J. Seese), approaching from the opposite direction and heading for the fallen child who on his hands and knees was trying to rise from the sur*432face of the road to which he had tumbled. Mrs. Eckley leaped from the car, waved her arms and screamed to Seese“Don’t run over him!” She continued this wailing entreaty as the Seese car bore down on the helpless lad.
A few moments later, both Eckley and Seese were extracting the unconscious and broken body of Darel Eckley from beneath the front axle of the defendant’s car. The child’s left leg wa,s twisted and broken and his head was horribly crushed. Dr. C. G. Jordan testified that the cranium vault through the frontal, parietal and occipital areas had sustained such multiple fractures that “the whole skull was like a sponge.” The child never recovered consciousness and died eight days later.
In the ensuing negligence action which the parents brought against the defendant Seese, the issue narrowed down to one proposition: Did Darel Eckley ■come to his death as the result of injuries sustained when he fell from his parents’ car or was he killed by the defendant’s car hitting him head-on and running over him? The jury found that Darel had been hit by the Seese car and it was this impact which visited death on the child. The case was well tried and the presiding judge submitted the issue of fact to the jury on a charge in which the defendant could possibly find no reason for fault. The Judge instructed the jury: “... if you believe from the evidence that his death was caused by his fall out of the car by hitting the road then, of course, you would stop right there and find for the defendant, because if you believe that his death was caused by his fall from the car and by hitting the road Mr. Seese would not be guilty of negligence, or if you are uncertain and cannot determine from the evidence whether he was killed by the fall on the road or by being hit by the car of the defendant then you *433would find for the defendant, because you must find from the evidence before you find for the plaintiff that the child was killed by the car of Mr. Seese and by no other means.”
During the jury’s deliberation they asked for further instructions through their foreman who asked: “Your Honor, the jury would like to hear again the part of the charge to the jury which pertains to whether the jury is to decide whether the defendant’s car was solely responsible for the death of the child?”
The Judge replied: “The Court: Yes. Unless the Seese car was solely responsible for the death of the child there would be no case. In other words, the action is brought against Mr. Seese to recover. Unless you find his car killed the child, there would be no liability on Mr. Seese. First, if you found that the child was killed by falling from the car, you would find for the defendant. If you could not determine what actually caused his death, whether falling from the car or being hit by the car, then you would have to find for the defendant. You cannot find for the plaintiffs unless you find this child was killed by the Seese car.”
With this issue of fact having been squarely passed upon by the jury, the matter should be at an end. I see no justification for a judgment n.o.v. The Majority says: “. .. it is equally probable, if not more probable, that the multiple fractures of Darel’s head and brain were caused by his falling out of plaintiff’s automobile onto the concrete highway, instead of being caused by defendant’s bumper which would have likely caused a different kind of head injury.”
It is not for this Court to weigh probabilities. We have said countless times that an appellate court may reverse a plaintiff’s verdict in a case of this kind only when it is inconceivable that the verdict may be rationalized on any reasonable, hypothesis and this after weighing the evidence in the light most advantageous *434to the plaintiff. With that kind of a criterion to guide us in reviewing the evidence here, it is simply contrary to human experience, as I view it, to say that it is inconceivable the accident could have happened in the manner described by the plaintiff’s witnesses. In point of reality, it is inconceivable that it could have happened in any other way. Darel weighed only 40 pounds. The car in which he was riding was moving at the very conservative rate of from 25 to 30 miles per hour. The height of the floor of a Plymouth car to the ground is from 13 to 14 inches. Is it possible that with a slowly moving car a small body falling only 14 inches could be battered as Darel’s was? Even if Darel fell on his head, it is to me incredible that such a fall would crush, mangle and pulverize the skull so as to reduce it to a sponge.
The human skull does not have the fragility of a cardboard container that can be crushed between the thumb and forefinger. It is built to withstand all the ordinary falls and blows that enter into nearly every healthy young person’s life. The Creator built a strongbox in which to store the jewel of the brain. Even at 3 1/2 years the bones of a boy have attained a durability that withstand a fall from heights considerably above 14 inches, a tripping down stairs, a tumble from roller skates. Without proof that Darel’s skull was tissue paper thin, and there is no evidence that he was not a perfectly normal child, it is impossible to believe that with a fall of 14 inches, even from a moving-object, his skull would be reduced to a parcel of bone fragments held together only by a net of cartilage, membrane and scalp. Especially is it impossible to accept this hypothesis when a perfectly natural explanation keeps knocking at the door of understanding for recognition. Why dispose of a case on a nebulous and attenuated hypothesis when we have the judgment of *435twelve citizens tried and true who found, after considering all the evidence, that Darel’s skull was cut to pieces because it was hit by a car travelling from 40 to 50 miles per hour?
Moreover, to accept the defendant’s contention as to how the accident occurred is to introduce into the case an enigma which can have no possible solution. The defendant says that his car did not strike Darel. How then did the boy get under the car where he was found when it finally stopped? The axle of the defendant’s car measures only 7 3/4 inches from the ground. How could the child have gotten under that axle without having been hit by it? Darel ivas 42 inches tall, and weighed 40 pounds. There is no possible position that his body could have taken that it would not have measured more than 7 3/4 inches tall. Moreover, we have the plaintiff’s direct testimony that after Darel fell from the ear he was “on his hands and legs,” and with head raised, he was “trying to get up.” On what imagined theory can it be argued that the car could pass over him while he was in this position and yet not strike him?
In addition, we have the positive testimony of Adam Eckley that he saw blood on the bumper. He also testified that just before the impact with the defendant’s car, Darel’s head was facing west, his feet pointed to the east. After the impact the child’s body was found beneath the defendant’s car with his head toward the south and his feet pointing north. If, as the defendant contends, the boy’s skull was fragmentized by the simple fall of 14 inches to the road, he then would certainly have been unconscious from that moment and he could not have moved. The fact, however, is that the body did move. The fact is also that one leg was twisted and broken at- a “rather peculiar angle,” as testified to by the examining doctor, a re*436snlt which would more readily come from being struck by an automobile rather than by a fall of 14 inches.
Police Officer Anthony Bensch, referred to by the Majority in its Opinion, did not examine the car at the scene of the accident, but at the hospital in East Stroudsburg some time after the accident. Although he testified that he did not find any evidence of blood on the car, he admitted that, since the car had been driven in the rain from Brodheadsville to East Stroudsburg “it was possible it [the blood] ■ could have been washed off.” Furthermore, Bensch’s examination of the car was a cursory one. His explanation for not taking the car to a garage hoist where it could have been examined with some care was that “it was just one of those things.” He said that it was “just an accident” and made no further check. I submit that this is rather irresponsible and shaky evidence upon which to reverse the verdict of a jury which finds the testimony of the plaintiff’s witnesses wholly credible and trustworthy.
. The Majority quotes Eckley’s testimony in which he said that after the defendant’s car had passed him some 15 feet he (Eckley) did not see the boy on the road. But this testimony does not nullify his statement that the defendant’s ear struck Darel and moved him 15 feet. Eckley knew the exact location of the boy on the highway and he saw the defendant’s car heading directly for him. If the boy’s body, after the defendant’s car came to a stop, was 15 feet beyond ■where it was seen immediately prior to the arrival of Seese’s car at that point, the only possible conclusion, there having admittedly been no intervening cause, is that the Seese car pushed Darel 15 feet. In any event, any inconsistencies in the plaintiff’s testimony were for the jury to consider and resolve. As was said in Parker v. Matheson Motor Car Co., 241 Pa. 461, 466: *437“In other words, the search for the truth did not develop such a conflict that a finding one way or the other would he a mere guess; it rather presented a condition of evidence, where, by making due allowances for the position of the witness and the form of the questions and. answers on cross-examination, it was possible to harmonize apparently conflicting statements, and to draw justifiable inferences from the testimony as a whole.. Upon this state of the evidence it was for the jury to say how they would find, ...”
Seese was speeding at . the. rate of from, 40 to 50 miles per hour in a zone restricted to 35 miles per hour. This in itself, if it was the proximate cause of the accident, constituted negligence. He was still 200 feet away from Darel when the child tumbled into the road. If Seese had been exercising the care required of him on the highway and had had his car under control, as the law requires him to have. it under control, he could have stopped in time to avoid crushing the little body before him. His running down Darel under those circumstances is a clear case of negligence and the jury so found. I see no justification for reversing the verdict.