Court Opinion

ID: 9445859
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 21:39:18.174472+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:30:25.572993
License: Public Domain

*612PRETTYMAN, Circuit Judge
(dissenting) .
I would affirm. The question, as this court correctly says, is how the bus driver happened to become involved in the emergency; should he have apprehended danger of a collision ? As the court also correctly points out, plaintiff put in her case, calling both the bus driver and the automobile driver.
The facts are simple and clear. The bus and the Whalen car were standing side by side at an intersection waiting for a traffic light to change. The bus was next to the curb. The light changed, and both started up, the bus slowly and the Whalen car fast (reaching eight to ten miles an hour). The Whalen car cut across in front of the bus. The bus driver “hit the brake” but bumped the right rear fender of the car. The whole affair occurred within the width of a crosswalk. Appellant Loketch, a passenger on the bus, was thrown and injured when the bus stopped.
The trial court evaluated the evidence and found the bus driver without blame. I would leave the case at that.
I see the matter as the trial judge evidently saw it. The bus driver could not reasonably have apprehended that a car on his left was going to make a quick breakaway and turn across the front of his bus to the right. He was not called upon to wait until all passing traffic had passed him, on the chance that some driver might cut across in front of him. And the fact that even when he applied the brake as he did he hit the Whalen car proves conclusively that had he applied less pressure to the brake he would have hit the car harder and there would have been a worse jolt.
I accept the doctrine of the Cole case, relied upon so heavily by the court in this case. But the facts differ so vitally that the conclusion there reached is not to be reached here. There one Barnes, driving an automobile in moving traffic, unexpectedly cut in upon the tracks ahead of a streetcar. The next automobile ahead in the line of traffic slowed down, Barnes slowed down, and the streetcar stopped suddenly. There was no testimony upon the crucial question whether the motorman should have apprehended the danger. In our case a major thrust of the evidence is to that point. Applying the rule of the Cole case to the facts in this case I get the result the trial judge reached. He did so correctly, in my view.
I would accept the evaluation of the evidence made by the judge who heard it. I see nothing to support a conclusion that the bus driver should have apprehended danger, i. e., should have apprehended that a car standing on his left as they waited for the light was going to make a quick right turn across his front.