Eddlemon v. Southern Pacific Co.

HAVEN, J.

Plaintiff sued to recover damages for personal injuries suffered by him, arising out of a collision between an automobile which the plaintiff was driving and a train operated by the defendants, at a grade crossing at Stege station in the city of Richmond. A verdict was rendered in the sum of seven, thousand dollars, which was reduced by the judge of the trial court, upon a motion for a new trial, to four thousand dollars. Judgment was entered against the defendants for the reduced amount, from which they prosecute this appeal.

The plaintiff was a police officer of the city of Richmond. On the night of the accident, in the discharge of his duties as such, he and another police officer of said city proceeded by automobile to the vicinity of the station of the defendant Southern Pacific Company at Stege, for the purpose of examining vacant buildings and cars for detection of undesirable persons. Plaintiff was driving the automobile, and was seated on the left side thereof. On leaving the main part of the city of Richmond, he ran along the tracks of the Southern Pacific Company north of Stege station for a distance of about a mile and a half to a point back of the railroad station at Stege, where he stopped his machine, at the south end of the station toward Oakland, in a public street. During this trip he saw an engine, headed south toward Oakland, switching cars on one of the tracks which he passed. Plaintiff and his companion alighted from the automobile, went around back of the station, and inspected some empty cars and buildings, and then returned to their automobile. They stopped there and chatted from two to four minutes, and then decided to again cross the tracks to another portion of Stege and inspect other buildings. Plaintiff got into the driver’s seat of the automobile; his companion cranked the ear; they started the machine in low gear, and proceeded to cross the track at the grade crossing. Neither plaintiff nor his companion went in front of the station building to look up the track toward the north before starting the machine. They both testified that, before starting the automobile, they listened for any train

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approaching from either direction, and heard no bell, whistle, or other indication of an approaching train. Plaintiff further stated that just about the time he reached the track he saw the engine right upon him. The automobile was struck by a switch-engine with ears attached, proceeding southerly on the inner or “house” track, at a point slightly more than thirty-two feet southeasterly from the point where the automobile started, and between seventeen and eighteen feet distant from the front or easterly line of the station. Upon the front side of the station was a small projection or bay window, extending about two feet from the side of the station. Prom this was a slanting rocf nine or ten feet from the ground. Plaintiff’s eyes, when he was sitting in the driver’s seat, were approximately six feet from the ground, or three or four feet below the projection of this small slanting roof. Prom the point of starting the view of plaintiff to the north, from which direction the train was approaching, was interrupted by the station building so that he could see the track for a distance of only about fifteen feet northerly from the point wheire it would have been intersected by the southerly line of the station building if extended to the track. In proceeding from the point of departure to the point of the accident, the course of the automobile was in a southeasterly direction away from the station, so that the line of vision to the north along the track was extended more rapidly than if the automobile had proceeded along the southerly line of the station, or along a line exactly p'arallel thereto. When the automobile had proceeded a sufficient distance from Its starting point toward the place of the accident so that the front wheels were in a line with the front of the station building, and the driver, who was seated six feet in the rear of such point, was approximately twenty-three or twenty-four feet from the point of the accident, his line of vision across the southeasterly corner of the station building would have enabled him to observe the track for a distance of approximately one hundred feet northerly of the point of the accident. The distance from the front wheels of the automobile before starting to the nearest rail of the track was thirty-two feet. The distance from the front or easterly line of the station building to the nearest track was between seventeen and eighteen feet, and the distance