Litherbury v. Kimmet

OLNEY, J.

This is an appeal from a judgment against the defendant, Los Angeles Gas and Electric Company, in the sum of four thousand dollars, as damages for personal injuries alleged to have been suffered by the plaintiff because of the negligence of' the defendant. It seems that the plaintiff was a passenger in a so-called jitney motor bus on East Seventh Street, in Los Angeles, when the bus collided with a small motor truck, owned and operated by the Gas and Electric Company, and the plaintiff was injured. Originally, the jitney driver, the jitney owner, and the latter’s surety were all made parties defendant with the Gas and Electric Company, but later the action was dismissed as to all except the last. The grounds upon which the defendant asks for a reversal are three: First, the insufficiency of the evidence to justify the verdict; second, certain alleged erroneous instructions; and third, that the amount of the verdict is excessive.

As to the first point the evidence for the plaintiff was to the effect that while the bus in which she was riding was close behind the defendant’s truck going in the same direction and was endeavoring to pass it on the left, the truck suddenly and without warning turned to the left to go down an intersecting street, with the result that the bus ran into it. The defendant concedes that the jury having found for the plaintiff, this evidence must be taken to be true, but contends that it does not establish any causal connection between the failure of the truck driver to give any signal to those behind of his intention to turn to the left, and the collision which immediately followed. This contention is based on the testimony of the jitney driver that he first observed the truck just as he undertook to pass it, whence it is argued that even if the truck driver had given the usual signal of intention to turn to the left, the jitney driver would not have seen it, the collision would have occurred anyhow, and

ergo,

the failure of the truck driver to give the usual signal had nothing to do with the case.

This argument hardly needs discussion. It is based entirely on the assumption that the jitney driver would not

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