Smith v. Aggola

CRAIL, P. J.

This case arises out of another automobile collision and is an appeal by the plaintiffs from a judgment in favor of the defendants founded upon the verdict of a jury. It is our duty on appeal to view the evidence in the light most favorable to the defendants (respondents.) The plaintiffs, just prior to the collision, were busily engaged in looking backwards toward a man at a parked car but did not turn in front of defendant’s truck until the defendant’s truck was so close that in the exercise of ordinary care the defendant could not help but collide with the plaintiffs’ ear.

The mere fact that the defendant truck driver observed the movement of the coupe at all times did not charge him with notice that the driver of the coupe would turn directly across his path and expose herself to danger at a time and distance which would make a collision unavoidable.

(Curtis v. Pacific Elec. Ry. Co.,

15 Cal. App. (2d) 580 [59 Pac. (2d) 890];

[753]

Rasmussen

v.

Fresno Traction Co.,

15 Cal. App. (2d) 356 [59 Pac. (2d) 617];

Korchak

v.

Pacific Elec. Ry. Co.,

9 Cal. App. (2d) 89 [48 Pac. (2d) 752];

Palmer

v.

Tschudy,

191 Cal. 696 [218 Pac. 36].) If the jury accepted the testimony of defendant Aggola and the witness Bray, which it apparently did, that the truck was on its own proper side of the highway, traveling at a speed of eighteen or twenty miles an hour, and entered the intersection and was almost to the extended center line of Manuel Avenue before the coupe crossed from the west half of Cota Avenue, then there is not any ground for a finding of negligence on the part of the truck driver.