Court Opinion

ID: 9807386
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 20:02:30.567413+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:35:18.098749
License: Public Domain

DeviN, J.,
dissenting: I find myself unable to agree with the disposition of this case. I think there was evidence sufficient to require the submission of the case to the jury, and to sustain the ruling of the judge below in denying the motion for nonsuit.
*666Tbe evidence, considered in tbe light most favorable for tbe plaintiff, tended to show tbat defendant’s large passenger bus, in tbe nighttime, stopped without signal on tbe paved surface of a much traveled highway, there 16 feet wide, leaving unoccupied only 8 feet of the traveled portion of the highway. Here the bus remained, with lights undimmed, for five minutes, though the shoulders of the road were wide and level. This would seem to constitute a violation of the Motor Yehicle Act of 1937, ch. 407, sec. 123 (a).
The road was straight for half a mile and the driver of the bus saw the lights of an automobile approaching from the north — an automobile which he knew would pass the bus on his left, on the unoccupied 8 feet of the highway. The bus driver knew that one of his passengers was a child, and he knew or should have known from the directions given him that the child intended to cross the highway to the left, in the path of the approaching automobile, in order to go to the home of the child’s grandmother, just west of the road.
Under these circumstances, according to some of the evidence, the bus porter assisted the child off the bus to the, ground, on the right side of the bus, at a time when the child was momentarily unattended, and when the child’s mother was still on the bus, and this was done without any warning to the child of the danger from the automobile which was rapidly approaching. The child, in obedience to the impulsiveness of his age, dashed around the rear of the bus and across the highway, eager to reach his grandmother’s, and was struck on the west edge of the highway by the automobile, and killed. The driver of the automobile, suddenly confronted by the emergency, was unable to turn to his left because that portion of the highway was occupied by the bus, and was unable to stop or avoid striking the child who was running to his right.
This evidence, it seems to me, tended to show that the defendant, in the conduct of its business as a carrier of passengers for hire, and as the operator of a motor bus on the highway, failed to perform its full duty in that it failed to exercise reasonable care for the protection of plaintiff’s intestate under the circumstances, and in putting off an inexperienced child, beside the road,. at an unusual place, without warning him of the known danger from an approaching automobile. The facts were known to defendant’s employees and were not appreciated by the child. A word or a restraining hand would have saved a human life. I cannot agree that this was an unavoidable accident, and that the Bus Company was free from blame.
Clabkson and Seawell, JJ., concur in dissent.