Court Opinion

ID: 9591604
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 00:05:51.937739+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:02:57.700683
License: Public Domain

Hill, J.
(dissenting in part)—To me, instruction No. 15, which reads:
“If you find from a fair preponderance of the evidence that the operator of defendant city’s bus, through no negligence on his part, was compelled to stop or slow down said bus suddenly to avoid collision with another vehicle, then you are instructed that the defendant city’s operator was not guilty of negligence”;
was clearly applicable only to the operator- of the first bus. It does not relate to busses, but to a bus and “another vehicle.” By instruction No. 7, the jury had already been adequately and properly instructed as to the law governing any vehicle which follows another, and as to the duties of the driver of the second bps.
Instructions Nos. 14 and 16 were applicable to the situation created by the vehicle, allegedly belonging to defendants Watson and wife, which crossed in front of bus No. 1. Instruction No. 15, coming between them, when read in context was clearly intended to refer to the same situation, and not to the following bus. Only if instruction No. 15 is isolated from the instructions which immediately precede and follow it, can it be made the target of justifiable criticism.
I agree with the majority that the standard of care applicable to the city of Seattle should be the same with reference to its maintenance and inspection service as in the operation of its busses, i.e., the highest degree of care reasonably consistent with the practical operation of its business as a public carrier. The error complained of in instruction No. 21, however, was not prejudicial, because *587there was no evidence of negligence to take the case to the jury. The evidence was that the latent defect which caused the brake pedal to break was discoverable only by laboratory examination. The basis of the majority opinion is a statement by an expert witness on cross-examination, who conceded the possibility that there may have been a crack in the pedal before it broke, and that such a crack, if it existed, would have been visible. The argument, then, is that by a proper visual inspection the city could have discovered the crack, although in all probability it was not there.
The judgment should be affirmed in its entirety.
Hamley, C. J., Mallery, and Donworth, JJ., concur with Hill, J.