Court Opinion

ID: 9574850
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 21:08:56.031509+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:45:48.484658
License: Public Domain

Buchanan, J.,
dissenting.
According to the evidence this plaintiff was not injured “while alighting in the street.” The undisputed evidence is that when she was injured she was still in her seat and had not put a foot out of the cab.
The defendant owed to her, a passenger in its cab, the duty of exercising the highest degree of care for her safety, including the duty of providing for her a safe place to alight. Tri-State Coach Corp v. Stidham, 191 Va. 790, 62 S. E. (2d) 894.
The defendant did not perform that duty to this passenger. On the contrary it was guilty of inexcusable negligence resulting in her injury. With plenty of room immediately ahead to stop at the curb so the plaintiff could get out on the right, this driver chose to stop beside the parked car and so close to it that the plaintiff could not get out on the right side. Not only so, but with complete unconcern for her safety he opened the door on her left and tacitly invited her to get out on that side right in the path of an approaching car which he was bound to have seen if he had looked and which she did not, and as she said could not, see from her sitting position behind him. She had a right to rely on his implied assurance that it was safe for her to get out, at least to the point of putting her hand on the door frame and pulling herself up to where she could see. When she was injured after having done no more than that, I do not think it can be justly said as a matter of law, contrary to what the jury with the approval of the court below have said was *709the fact, that she was guilty of negligence which contributed to her injury and now bars her recovery.
Surely it ought not to be said that she violated the city ordinance. That ordinance provided that she should not “leave any taxicab by way of the left rear door.” She could not have violated that ordinance by remaining in her seat in the cab, which was her position when she was hurt. The same ordinance provided that the driver should not knowingly or wilfully permit her to leave by that door. Even this driver, if prosecuted under the ordinance for what he did here, could rely with complete assurance on the defense that he did not knowingly permit her to leave when she did not leave.
Our decision in Eggleston v. Broadway-Manhattan Taxicab Corp., 194 Va. 584, 74 S. E. (2d) 212, very clearly, in my opinion, does not require us to hold that the present plaintiff was guilty of negligence as a matter of law. In that case, as stated in the opinion, the plaintiff “could have alighted on either side” of the cab, but she “elected to alight on the left or street side of the cab.” In doing so, “she pushed open the left rear door that had just swung shut,” and the passing car struck the cab door “and knocked it shut against her foot and leg which she had thrust out of the door.”
There the plaintiff herself opened the door and was getting out, and had partially got out, right in the path of the approaching car which she should have seen but “which she did not see until it actually hit the door.”
Here the plaintiff was not in the act of getting out when she was hurt. She was still in her seat in the cab. She had not, as she testified, even started out of the cab. The driver opened the door and in effect invited her out. She had done no more than place her hand on the frame preparatory to getting up. She said, “I was fixing to get out of the cab when he pushed the door open, but I never got off the seat.”
She said she had never had a cab to stop like that before. When it did, she “went to open the door” on the right, but *710did not' because she saw she could not get out on that sidel She then tried the door on the left and told, the driver she' could not open it. He reached back, did something to the door and it came open. She put her hand on the door frame ■ and in that minute the door was struck by the passing car. That the accident happened before she even had time to look was shown by the testimony of the driver of the Green car, a witness for the defendant, who said that he did not see the. door open. “It hit me as I was going past, the door flew open and hit my door.”
The plaintiff testified that she always looked “when I get out of a cab, car or anything, I look up and down the street.” When she was hurt she had not had time to look; She could not see ahead from where she was sitting behind the driver, and she did not see this Green car until, it hit the door.
We said in the Eggleston case that the only legal rule applicable to the plaintiff’s situation was that she “must observe and use that degree of care that an ordinarily prudent, man would exercise under the existing circumstances.”
All the plaintiff did here was to put her hand on the frame of the door which the defendant’s driver had opened preparatory to getting out the only way she could get out. From her sitting position in the cab there was no danger apparent to her in that act, particularly when done on the implied assurance of the driver of the cab that it was safe for her to get out. She ought not, in my opinion, to be convicted as a matter of law of having done what no ordinarily prudent person would have done in the situation created by the gross negligence of defendant’s driver.
It was error, I think, for the trial court to refuse a continuance to the defendant because of the absence of the driver of this cab who was under recognizance to appear, and then also to refuse to allow to be read the evidence of that witness given on a former trial. I would reverse the case for that and send it back for a new trial.
Smith, J., joins in the dissent.