Court Opinion

ID: 9446034
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 21:44:30.031128+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:30:30.005420
License: Public Domain

STEWART, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
As to the sufficiency of the evidence to support a finding of negligence on the part of the railroad, I agree with the views expressed by my colleagues. From Sitar’s testimony an inference could properly be drawn that the flasher lights were not operating at the time of the collision.
It is upon the issue of the decedent’s contributory negligence that our views differ. Upon that issue I am unable to reconcile today’s decision with the pronouncements of the Supreme Court of Ohio setting out the standard of care required of a motorist who approaches a railroad crossing. That court has held in a long line of eases that if the driver has an opportunity to see an approaching train from a point of vantage at which he can stop in time to avoid a collision, his failure effectively to look makes him guilty of contributory negligence as a matter of law. Detroit, T. & I. Rd. Co. v. Rohrs, 1926, 114 Ohio St. 493, 151 N.E. 714; Toledo Terminal Rd. Co. v. Hughes, 1926, 115 Ohio St. 562, 154 N.E. 916; Pennsylvania Rd. Co. v. Rusynik, 1927, 117 Ohio St. 530, 159 N.E. 826, 56 A.L.R. 538; Patton v. Pennsylvania Rd. Co., 1939, 136 Ohio St. 159, 24 N.E.2d 597; Woodworth v. New York Cent. Rd. Co., 1948, 149 Ohio St. 543, 80 N.E.2d 142; see Detroit, T. & I. R. Co. v. Yeley, 6 Cir., 1947, 165 F.2d 375.
It is undisputed that in approaching the crossing, the decedent had an unobstructed view of the eastbound track for 1800 feet when he was 290 feet away, and that his range of vision increased to 2000 feet as he traveled between that point and the track at which the collision occurred. He was familiar with the crossing and had driven over it frequently. The decedent’s conduct in continuing to the point where he was struck by the westbound train was clearly irreconcilable with the duty of effectively looking before entering the crossing. The appel-lee is not aided by the presumption that the decedent was exercising ordinary care, when the undisputed physical circumstances show a clear disregard of this legal duty. Woodworth v. New York Cent. Rd. Co., supra. Patton v. Pennsylvania Rd. Co., supra.
The driver’s duty as set out in the cases cited above is not modified in Ohio where warning devices provided by the railroad fail to operate. Where a clear view along the tracks is available from a safe distance, the Ohio Supreme Court has taken the position that failure of the driver effectively to look is a bar to his recovery despite the failure of the railroad’s warning devices. Columbus, Delaware & Marion Elec. Co. v. O’Day, 1931, 123 Ohio St. 638, 176 N.E. 569; Lohrey v. Baltimore & O. Rd. Co., 1936, 131 Ohio St. 386, 3 N.E.2d 54; Toledo Terminal Rd. Co. v. Hughes, 1926, 115 Ohio St. 562, 154 N.E. 916.
It is of course true, as the majority opinion points out, that in O'Day the legal question was not, as here, whether the case should have been submitted to the jury. The case was submitted, and the jury by answers to interrogatories found that the driver could have seen the approaching interurban car in time to *528stop his automobile in a place of safety if he had looked, and that he did not look. In the present case there was no conflict in the evidence as to the decedent’s range of vision, and the undisputed physical circumstances thus conclusively pointed to the same state of facts as found by the jury in O’Day.
The significance here of the O’Day case, as I see it, is that it imposed upon the driver the same standard of care as that set out in the Rohrs case, even when a warning device erected by the railroad was not operating at the time of the ' collision. The third paragraph of the syllabus in the O’Day case [123 Ohio St. 638, 176 N.E. 570] is unequivocal:
“The presence of an automatic signal alarm, voluntarily instituted and operated by an interurban railway company at a city street crossing, does not absolve a traveler upon the highway from the exercise of the care that a reásonably prudent person would exercise under all the circumstances. Such care upon the part of a driver of an automobile includes the obligation of exercising the faculties of sight and hearing, when such driver is far enough from the railway track to be able to stop his automobile before reaching the crossing.”
To be sure, the duty imposed by the O’Day, Hughes, and Lohrey cases is a quite different one from that originally enunciated by the Ohio Supreme Court in 1888 in Cleveland, C., C. & I. Railway Co. v. Schneider, 45 Ohio St. 678, 17 N.E. 321, 322, where it was said that, “Persons approaching the crossing, or about to cross, have the right to presume, in the absence of knowledge to the contrary, that the gate-men are properly discharging their duties, * * * ”
The difference between this original rule and the one developed in the later cases wás brought into sharp focus by the dissenting opinion in the Lohrey case, which pointed out the majority’s departure there from the Schneider rule. 131 Ohio St. 386, 390, 3 N.E.2d 54, 57. The conflict was again recognized by the Ohio Supreme Court in Tanzi v. New York Cent. Rd. Co., 1951, 155 Ohio St. 149, 98 N.E.2d 39, 24 A.L.R.2d 1151. In that case a motorist had swerved into a pedestrian to avoid colliding with a train at a crossing where the watchman had failed to warn of the train’s approach. The pedestrian sued both the motorist and. the railroad. The opinion in the Tanzi case pointed out that it was not necessary there to determine whether the rule of the Schneider case would still be followed “in an action by a driver.” 155 Ohio St. at page 157, 98 N.E.2d at page 43. It is significant, however, that the court in Tanzi held that although there was sufficient evidence to support a finding of the railroad’s negligence, the motorist was negligent as a matter of law in approaching the crossing at a speed substantially greater than he would have used if a warning had been given. For that reason the judgment upon a jury verdict against the railroad alone was set aside as unreasonable.
While Ohio law thus requires a motorist approaching a known railroad crossing to look at a time and place when and where looking will be effective, Ohio law obviously does not and cannot impose such a duty where, because of the peculiar nature of the crossing, there is no such time nor place. When a crossing is made hazardous by a physical obstruction to an approaching motorist’s view, the question of the motorist’s contributory negligence is one for a jury.
Thus, Biery v. Pennsylvania Rd. Co., 1951, 156 Ohio St. 75, 99 N.E.2d 895, 896, is only one in a series of decisions holding that it cannot be negligence as a matter of law for a motorist to fail to see -a train which could not have been seen from a position of safety. In that case the motorist was struck at a crossing by the defendant’s train westbound on “main track number 3.” There was evidence that a brush pile, signal tower and tool shed “tended to obstruct the view of the main tracks to the east,” and that steam from a standing switch en*529gine, “continuing and not of momentary existence” “totally obscured the view along main track number 3 to the east.” In holding that the issue of the motorist’s contributory negligence was one for a jury, the court, reviewing the above evidence, pointed out that there was “no showing that the decedent did not stop and look for approaching trains when he reached the crossing and that by looking then or during the progress over the crossing he could have seen the oncoming train.” See also Cleveland, C., C. & St. L. Ry. Co. v. Kuhl, 1931, 123 Ohio St. 552, 176 N.E. 222; Baltimore & O. R. Co. v. Henery, 6 Cir., 1956, 235 F.2d 770.1
It is thus in cases involving crossings made peculiarly hazardous by a physical obstruction to an approaching traveler’s range of vision — where there can be no conclusive showing that by looking he could have seen — that the question of his contributory negligence is to be determined by a jury. I do not understand, however, that the Ohio Supreme Court has held that a jury should determine the question in a case where the crossing was made unusually hazardous in some other way, such as by the speed of the train. Indeed, all railroad crossings are inherently hazardous, which is no doubt the reason for the rule requiring an approaching motorist to look and listen while still in a position of safety. The speed of the train in the present case was seventy miles an hour. In the Patton case it was sixty, and in the Woodworth case, eighty; yet in each of those cases judgment was entered for the railroad as a matter of law.
Ohio imposes a high standard of care upon a traveler approaching a railroad grade crossing, a standard which inevitably often leads to a harsh result in litigation. For the reasons discussed, I think the law of Ohio made it the district court’s duty to grant the appellant’s motion for final judgment.

. Pre Erie Railroad Co. v. Tompkins (304 U.S. 64, 58 S.Ct. 817, 82 L.Ed. 1188) decisions of this court, such as Erie Railroad Co. v. Stewart, 6 Cir., 1930, 40 F.2d 855 and Pennsylvania R. Co. v. Shindledecker, 6 Cir., 1930, 44 F.2d 162, have no bearing here,