Court Opinion

ID: 9828188
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 18:11:46.790629+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:42:45.417424
License: Public Domain

On Motion for Rehearing.
In our original opinion we made the following statement:
“All that portion lying north of the street car track is paved for the purposes of travel for those traveling in private conveyances, such as automobiles, wagons, etc.; that portion occupied by the car tracks after it leaves the corporate limits of the city of Houston is not paved, and is seldom, if ever, used by persons in private vehicles; that part near the Porest.Hill Cemetery could not be crossed by an automobile without great difficulty, if at all.”
Appellants have filed their motion for rehearing, and therein insist that the statement so made is not supported by the evidence, and ask that we correct the same and make it correspond to the evidence. We think the statement, in so far as it relates to matters material to any issue presented by the appeal, is substantially correct.
In testifying as to the condition of the Harrisburg boulevard at the point of the collision in which Mrs. McCallum was injured, the witness C. H. Scannell said:
“The roadway for automobiles is altogether on the north side of the street car track.”
Mrs. G-. C. Armstrong testified that there was no roadway on the south side of the street car track; that there was no driveway on that side for an automobile.
The same witness, in testifying as to her remembrance of the collision, said:
“It was in my mind, and so it occurred to me very forcibly when I saw the automobile because there was no driveway there then, and it still remains in my mind that way because there was no drive for an auto at that place.”
Mrs. Maynard, one of the occupants of the automobile in which the injured party was riding at the time of her injury, a witness for the plaintiff, testifying with reference to the collision, said:
“I didn’t think they would deliberately run over us. They saw we couldn’t get any further.”
Again she said:
“There was nothing to prevent us from going over there, from going further forward in clearing the track except a little curbing kind of, too. The steps were on this side of us.”
Again:
“We didn’t have any place to get out. If it had been open there we probably could have had time, if we had had open space, had had a place to get out without getting smashed up.”
The same witness testified that, had the auto continued its course when it turned to the south, towards the street car track, it would have run into the ditch and a barbed wire fence.
Mrs. Storey testified that when she first discovered the street car, after they had missed their turn to go into the park, the driver of the automobile saw she could not make the turn, so she had to turn westward to avoid hitting the concrete steps; the high embankment.
Testifying further, she said:
“I will explain to the jury how the concrete steps are that I have just mentioned in my testimony at the Eorest Hill gate: You have to go up two steps from the street to the sidewalk to go into the entrance, the pedestrian gate, and at that time * * * there was quite an embankment there. * * * These steps led from the Harrisburg boulevard * ♦ * up to the sidewalk going into Eorest Hill gate. There was a curb along the side of those steps; it was of concrete.”
She further testified that Mrs. Warner, the driver of the automobile, could not get any further across the street car track; that she could not clear the track on account of that embankment; that she could not climb that embankment and .get over the barbed wire fence also.
Testifying further, this witness said that *347the fact that there was not enough room for the auto to get through prevented the driver from going on in the direction she was going towards the sidewalk and clearing the car track; that there seemed to be a little ditch in there at the time, and then there was a sidewalk, and she would have had to have gone clear up on the sidewalk, and that she (witness) did not know whether she could have done that or not.
The inspection .of the photographs of the surroundings at the point of the collision marked B and 0, which are incorporated in the statement of facts, without doubt show that there was a ditch between' the street car track and the curb on the south side of the street; that the sidewalk on that side of the street was upon an embankment, to reach which two steps were constructed. It is apparent from an inspection of photographs marked A and B that the street beginning at the car track and extending to its north line was paved, and that the bed of the car track was bedded with shell only, and it is shown by Exhibit O that the rails of the car track protrude above the shell.
We think the matters shown by the statement of facts substantially support the statement made by us and complained of by counsel for appellant..
Having made-the foregoing explanation, we overrule the motion.
Overruled.