Court Opinion

ID: 9721719
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 09:06:25.640714+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:24:27.004036
License: Public Domain

MR. JUSTICE ENGLISH, dissenting: I believe the judgment should be reversed and the cause remanded for a new trial. The verdict was, in my opinion, contrary to the manifest weight of the evidence. As is shown by the recital of facts in the majority opinion, the overwhelming weight of the evidence establishes the fact that plaintiff ran into the side of the automobile directly opposite a light pole between 8808 and 8810 South Houston Street. This point is fifty feet south of the south side of the bakery and, therefore, at least 50 feet south of the front end of the parked truck. Since the child hit the middle of the side of the moving car, it means that the front of the car had traversed something more than 55 feet after passing the front of the truck. Plaintiff was not yet five years old, and too small to be seen by a motorist while she was behind the rows of cars which lined the street, and until she emerged, running, from between two of the parked cars. The witness Paloma, who, with Mrs. Warmus, was in an ideal position to see the occurrence, testified that plaintiff came out of a gangway between the two houses, crossed the sidewalk at a slow run, and, without stopping at the curb, continued out 8 to 10 feet into the street when she hit the side door column of the car. Thus, she had taken only a step or two from behind the parked car when the impact occurred. From this, the conclusion is inescapable that she was still obscured behind the parked car at just about the instant when the front of the moving automobile passed her. The driver of the car could not, and, as the evidence shows, did not see her. Under these circumstances, it seems to me to be of no consequence whatsoever that the driver had driven around a double-parked truck some 50 feet back. The evidence of proximate causation is utterly lacking. Nor is this lack of causation evidence limited to the circumstantial situation I have referred to above. Paloma’s direct evidence was to the effect that plaintiff was in between two parked cars when he first saw the moving automobile, at which time it was already around the. truck and coming into its own lane in front of 8806 Houston. At that time the moving car was, therefore, only about 25 feet away from the point of the accident, and plaintiff was obscured between two parked cars. That identical situation would have existed regardless of whether the truck had been parked where it was, or a mile away. At that critical point in time before this unfortunate occurrence, the truck was not obscuring the driver’s view of plaintiff, and the truck was not obscuring plaintiff’s view of the moving car. The parked car, however, was obscuring the view of both. To assume, as the majority does, that the driver of the car was caused by the truck to concentrate on getting around the truck, was distracted, less alert, etc., and, as a consequence, failed to see plaintiff, is sheer speculation completely lacking in evidentiary support. The testimony of all the disinterested witnesses shows that plaintiff, in running out from behind a parked car, ran only two or three feet past the street side of the parked car when she struck the middle of the side of the driver’s car; so he couldn’t have seen her, however alert and undistracted he might have been. The only conflict in the evidence arises from the driver’s testimony to the effect that the occurrence took place just as lie was passing the front of the truck. Were it not for this testimony, I would conclude that defendant’s motion for a judgment notwithstanding the verdict should have been allowed, and that a judgment of reversal should be entered in this court. This self-serving testimony of the driver, however, can be given no substantial weight as against the overwhelming evidence locating the point of accident far enough down the street effectively to remove the truck and its owner from any question of responsibility.*  Unless we are to abandon appellate review of motions for new trial on the question of manifest weight of the evidence, then we should award a new trial in this case, which I consider a classic example. The principle of considering the evidence in the light most favorable to plaintiff, as stated, with citations, by the majority, does not apply to our consideration of whether or not a new trial should be granted. In such circumstances, we should, of course, weigh the evidence, and, in doing so, I find it weighted heavily in favor of defendant. (Eilers v. Chicago Transit Authority, 2 Ill App2d 233, 236, 119 NE2d 449.)   In addition to tlie witnesses whose testimony on this point was alluded to in the majority opinion, the truck driver also testified that the group of people gathered in the street after the accident, were two or three houses down the street from the truck.