Court Opinion

ID: 9650653
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 15:47:47.555756+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:21:24.447197
License: Public Domain

*336Dissenting Opinion by
Mr. Justice Musmanno:
On the night of March 19-20, 1954, Millard F. Crane and Leslie H. Dean, astride their motorcycles, were travelling westwardly on Route 358 in Mercer County when, as they approached Greenville at about 2 a.m., Crane experienced motor trouble and halted. His companion stopped to render aid. Crane pushed his machine to within 3 inches of the edge of the highway and Dean placed his motorcycle alongside of it, 8 feet from the center of the road, which was 22 feet wide, thus leaving considerable space for traffic both ways.
It was the proverbial “dark and rainy night,” with pools of water and deep mud bordering the highway. Both motorcycles were equipped with lights which were turned on to their utmost candlepower, so that with spotlights, headlights, parking lights, and reflectors operating, they produced an oasis of incandescence visible for a distance of 500 feet. The fault in the motor was apparently a minor one for it was remedied in two or three minutes, and the men prepared to resume their journey. Crane stepped on his “kick starter”, the motor started, and he was just about to “go into gear” when an automobile coming up out of the night plunged into the group of machines and men, inflicting injuries and damage which are not in dispute in this appeal.
Crane and Dean sued Fred A. Neal, owner and operator of the offending automobile, and Neal brought action against Crane and Dean. At the trial the Court entered a nonsuit against Neal and the jury returned verdicts against Neal in the amount of $3,000 in favor of Crane and $12,000 in behalf of Dean.
Neal has appealed for a new trial in the cases in which he was the defendant, alleging error in the Court’s charge on the subject of contributory negligence. After properly charging that the burden of proving contributory negligence rested with the defend*337ant Neal, the Trial Judge said: “It is also said that the negligence or the contributory negligence of a party, in order to have any bearing on your consideration, must be a proximate cause of the incident involved. You are instructed that the term, proximate cause, is a term used and means a moving or efficient cause, without which the injury would not have occurred. It is an act or an omission which becomes a proximate cause of an injury whenever such injury is the natural and probable consequence of the act or omission in question, and one which ought to have been foreseen by a person of ordinary care and prudence in the light of the attending circumstances. It need not have been the sole cause of the incident, but it must have been a moving — an efficient, productive cause of the incident. So when you consider the negligence of any party, or the possible contributory negligence of any party, it should have a bearing on your decision only if that act was a proximate cause of the accident.”
In the case of Weir v. Haverford Electric Light Company, 221 Pa. 611, 617, this Court said: “Any negligence on the part of a plaintiff that contributes to, and is the proximate cause of, his injury defeats his action. There can be no balancing or matching of degrees of negligence.”
We reaffirmed this statement in 1943 in Kasanovich v. George, 348 Pa. 199, 202. In McFadden v. Pennzoil Co., 341 Pa. 433, 436, we said: “ ‘The test for contributory negligence is whether the act constituting the negligence contributed in any degree to the production of the injury, [citing cases] If it did, then there can be no recovery.’ Robinson v. American Ice Co., 292 Pa. 366, 369. But, in order to defeat recovery of damages for injuries arising from the negligence of another, the injured person’s negligence must have been a juridical cause of the injury, and not simply a condition of its occurrence . .
*338The only contributory negligence complained of in this case is that the plaintiffs should have removed their motorcycles from the highway before working on Crane’s disabled machine. We have seen that the vehicles were halted for only two or three minutes, that while the men worked on them they were illuminated to a degree which made them visible for 500 feet, and that because of the quagmire which bordered the stopping place it was impracticable to push the vehicles off the road. Dean testified that had they moved into the mud they would not have been able to get back to the pavement again.
If the plaintiffs were negligent in halting on the highway for the fragmentary period indicated, it was because of Section 1019 of The Vehicle Code of May 1, 1929, P. R. 905, Art. X, (75 PS §611), which reads: “(a) No person shall park or leave standing any vehicle, whether attended or unattended, upon the paved or improved or main traveled portion of any highway, outside of a business or residence district, when it is practicable to parle or leave such vehicle standing off the paved or improved or main traveled portion of such highway: Provided, In no event shall any person park or leave standing any vehicle, whether attended or unattended, upon any highway, unless a clear and unobstructed width of not less than fifteen (15) feet upon the main traveled portion of said highway opposite such standing vehicle shall be left for free passage of other vehicles thereon ... (c) The provisions of this section shall not apply to the driver of any vehicle which is disabled while on the paved or improved or main traveled portion of a highway, in such manner and to such extent that it is impossible to avoid stopping and temporarily leaving such vehicle in such position” (Emphasis supplied.)
*339It Avill be noted that the italicized portions of the section completely take the plaintiffs out of the prohibition described because, as indicated, it was impracticable to leave the highway, they left an unobstructed passage of at least 15 feet width, and it was impossible for them to avoid having stopped. Even so, if by a forced interpretation of the section against the established facts in the case, it should appear that a jury question remained as to whether the plaintiffs had violated the statute, that issue was put squarely to the jury in language specifically formulated by the defendant, namely: “It is true that, if a violation of the statutory law of the Commonwealth is a proximate cause of an accident, then that becomes negligence as a matter of law. One of the matters which the defendant has requested me to charge you on is as follows, No. 5, and we affirm it: If a violation by Dean or Crane of any section of the Vehicle Code caused or contributed to the happening of the accident, then they cannot recover. We affirm that.”
The jury thus found that whatever Crane and Dean did which was wrong (and the only wrong alleged was that they remained on the highway after they were forced to come to a stop) did not contribute “to the happening of the accident.” The record confirms this finding, and I would accordingly affirm the judgments.