Merrill v. Finigan

PARKER, J.,

pro

tem.

This is an appeal from a judgment in favor of the plaintiffs in the sum of $4,892.70, against the defendant B. & H. Transportation Company and from an order denying defendants’ motion for a new trial. The appellants’ brief in reality is a duplicate of the reporter’s transcript, the object being apparently to secure here what the court below denied, a trial

de novo.

This hardly fits into the scheme of appellate practice. However, we will discuss the case as it is presented.

The controversy arises out of an automobile accident in which three different automobiles are involved and it happened in the intersection of two streets in Long Beach. Redondo Avenue runs in a general northerly and southerly direction. Redondo Avenue does not intersect Second Street in the sense that is generally understood when we speak of intersecting streets. The situation is that Redondo Avenue meets Second and stops; yet there is an area that might be classed as an intersection for our purposes.

Plaintiff Joseph E. Merrill was driving a Star automobile on a January night or evening, after dark. His lights were lit and he was driving at a speed of some ten miles per hour hugging the northerly curb of Second Street and driving in

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a westerly direction. Defendant Finigan was driving a Star automobile along Second Street on the southerly side thereof and in an easterly direction. His lights were lit. Plaintiffs and defendant Finigan were both in the area which may be designated as the intersection. The defendant and appellant B. & H. Transportation Company owns and operates a line of busses in the city of Long Beach and particularly a bus which on the night in question was being operated by one Slaughter. "When the cars noted were in the intersection, each in the act of crossing, appellant’s bus came along and entered the intersection at a speed of from eighteen to twenty miles per hour. The area compromising the so-called intersection was forty-five feet square. The bus was twenty-eight feet long. This bus came thus into the intersection area and attempted a right turn. In accomplishing this the bus went past the center of Second Street and practically monopolized the street. It obscured all view of plaintiffs’ automobile and put defendant Finigan strictly on the defensive for his own safety. Finigan, in trying to negotiate the crossing, was forced north across the center line and the bus between him and plaintiffs’ car. The bus missed plaintiffs’ car by approximately a foot and Finigan, maneuvering along behind the bus crashed into the car of plaintiffs, causing the damage forming the basis of the recovery, injuring" the car of plaintiffs and the passenger therein. The view of Slaughter, the driver of the bus, during the last one hundred feet of his approach to the intersection was obstructed by a building on the property at the southeast corner and palm trees in the parking abutting said property on the north and west so that Slaughter did not have a clear and uninterrupted view of the traffic east on Second Street for a distance of two hundred feet east of said intersection.