Court Opinion

ID: 9712600
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 04:56:59.268264+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:13.203578
License: Public Domain

Souris, J.
{concurring). I concur in affirming the trial judge’s direction of a verdict on defendant’s motion at conclusion of plaintiff’s proofs.
Plaintiff offered expert opinion testimony that the •60° angle at which the defendant’s railroad track crossed the highway made its train more difficult to see at night than it would be were the track perpendicular to the highway. The expert testified that light is reflected from a reflector surface at the same angle at which it strikes the surface; that a diffused surface, which means a very irregular surface, will reflect light back in all directions equally; that a railroad car has both reflector and diffuse surfaces; and that to the extent the defendant’s train intersected the highway at a greater or lesser angle than '90°, the light from decedent’s headlamps which struck the railroad cars’ reflector surfaces would bounce off at an angle away from decedent’s view, thus making the railroad cars more difficult for him to see than they would be were they traveling perpendicular to him.
Plaintiff sought to invoke the “special circumstances” rule of Staal v. Grand Rapids & I. R. Co., 57 Mich 239, 243-244, which was recognized but not .applied in McParlan v. Grand Trunk W. R. Co., 273 Mich 527. By that rule plaintiff sought to impose upon defendant a common-law duty to maintain some signal or warning device in addition to the ordinary wooden crossbuck sign required by statute. Nailing to provide such additional signal or warning devices, plaintiff contended, was prima facie proof of defendant’s negligence.
Even if we were to hold that such circumstances (did impose a duty upon the defendant railroad to *526provide additional signal or warning devices, there is no evidence in this record that plaintiff’s decedent did not see the train, or did not see it soon enough to stop, because of the railroad’s failure to provide such devices. In short, had the case been submitted to the jury on the record made by the plaintiff, the jury would have had to engage in an exercise in conjecture* to determine whether the collision between decedent’s automobile and defendant’s train was caused (1) by decedent’s failure to see the train in time to stop because defendant negligently failed to provide adequate signal or warning devices, (2) by decedent’s own negligence, the presumption of his due care possibly being outbalanced by physical and other evidentiary facts, (3) by decedent’s own suicidal act, or (4) by an intervening wilful or negligent act of a third person. Accordingly, we must affirm the trial judge’s direction of a verdict for defendant in the absence of any evidence of actionable' negligence.
Affirmed. Costs to defendant.
Smith and Edwards, JJ., concurred with Souris,. J.

 “ ‘As a theory of causation, a conjecture is simply an explanation consistent with known facts or conditions, but not dedueible from-them as a reasonable inference. There may be 2 or more plausible explanations as to how an event happened or what produced it; yet, if the evidence is without selective application to any 1 of them, they remain conjectures only. On the other hand, if there is evidence which points to any 1 theory of causation, indicating a logical' sequence of cause and effect, then there is a juridical basis for sueh a determination, notwithstanding the existence of other plausible theories with or without support in the evidence.’ ” City of Bessemer v. Clowdus, 261 Ala 388, 394 (74 So 2d 259); quoted in Kaminski v. Grand Truck W. R. Co., 347 Mich 417, 422.