Ebert v. Tide Water Associated Oil Co.

GRIFFIN, J.

Sitting without a jury, the trial court rendered a judgment against appellants as the result of an automobile accident in Huntington Beach. Olive Street, in that city, is a public highway running in an easterly and westerly direction. Second Street runs in a northerly and southerly direction. Each street is 40 feet wide. This is a blind intersection to cars traveling southerly on Second Street and to cars traveling westerly on Olive Street, by reason of the obstructed view on the northeast corner due to a house and palm tree located thereon. At about 4:30 p. m. on May 24, 1940, respondents were riding in a bantam Austin station wagon driven by respondent Warren S. Ebert. It was

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proceeding westerly on Olive Street at an approximate speed of 15 to 20 miles per hour. Appellant Beaudreaux, employee of appellant Tide Water Associated Oil Company, a corporation, was driving a Sterling truck in a southerly direction on Second Street at a speed estimated by respondents at from 25 to 30 miles per hour. Appellants’ truck was 21 feet long.

The testimony of witnesses for respondents was that respondents’ car had reached the imaginary easterly curb line of Second Street when he (Ebert) saw appellants’ truck approaching in a southerly direction approximately 35 feet north of the northerly curb line of the intersection; that he (Ebert) continued across Second Street at 15 to 20 miles per hour and that the truck collided with the Ebert car in the southwest corner of the intersection after it had traversed nearly the entire intersection.

The evidence shows that the collision occurred about two feet east of the prolonged westerly curb line of Second Street and in the southwest corner of the intersection. In this respect the trial judge made the following statement in his oral decision:

. . where the collision occurred was at a point where Mr. Ebert was pretty well through the intersection. Of course, they were traveling at approximately the same rate of speed I think where the collision occurred, and there isn’t any question but what the truck hit the station wagon. I think from that and the fact that they were both going at pretty much the same rate of speed that we have the broad inference that that would be the car (Eberts’) that would be entering the intersection first, and this being an ordinary highway and not a through highway, the Code provides that the vehicle entering the intersection first has the right-of-way. So I think that the plaintiff entered the intersection first and had the right-of-way.”