West v. House

WOOD (Parker), J.

In this action for damages resulting from a collision of automobiles, judgment was for defendants. Plaintiffs appeal from the judgment.

Plaintiff Mr. West was driving his automobile east on 10th Street in Long Beach. The street extends easterly and westerly, is 36 feet wide, and a single white line is in the center of it. Plaintiff Mrs. Buell, who is a sister of Mr. West, was riding with him as a passenger.

Mr. West testified that he was driving about 12 miles per hour, about 4 feet from the white line, and about 2% feet from the automobiles parked on the south side of the street; he was driving slowly because the street is narrow, dangerous, and a bad spot; he did not know there was going to be an impact; that “it seemed like there was a sort of a flash, and

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something came towards me, and that is all I know”; the right side of his automobile came in contact with the door of an automobile parked on the south side of 10th Street, and it threw his automobile out of control and over in the other lane, the north half of 10th Street, and an automobile going west in that lane hit his automobile and turned it over on the sidewalk on the north side of the street; he did not notice the parked automobile before the accident; there was no damage to the front of Mr. West’s automobile.

At the time of the accident, defendant Mr. House was in the driver’s seat of his automobile which was parked (facing east) on the south side of 10th Street—the right wheels being about 6 inches from the south curb, and the rear wheels being about 14 feet from the intersection of 10th Street and Hoffman Street. (Hoffman Street extends northerly and southerly and is west of the scene of the accident.) The left front door of his automobile is 4 feet wide, is hinged at the front and opens from the rear. He looked, by use of the rearview mirror, to the rear of his automobile and did not see any automobile approaching. Then he opened the left front door about 10 inches, that is, about 3 inches beyond the outer edge of the “fender line.” (It is 7 inches from the closed door to the outer edge of the fender.) He held the door open, to that extent, about 40 seconds or “not over 2 minutes,” and then it was struck by Mr. West’s automobile. The impact did not pull the door out or away from the automobile—just pushed the door, “kind of telescoped it.” There was no damage to any other part of Mr. House’s automobile.