Woodhead v. Wilkinson

MELVIN, J.

Plaintiff sued for damages for personal injuries, charging defendant with negligently driving an automobile over her.

The action was tried by the court without a jury. Judgment was for damages in the sum of one thousand five hundred dollars.

The facts as found were substantially as follows:

On the evening of November 14, 1915, plaintiff had been driving her motor car on the state highway near Ontario, in the county of San Bernardino. Her attention and the notice of her guests in the automobile, had been attracted by the shouts and actions of the defendant, who was in a car that had stopped at the sicle of the road, and after proceeding about a quarter of a mile she had stopped at the request of her father, who, believing that defendant and his companions were in trouble, wanted to go back to assist them. She had turned to the right and had stopped her car facing west, with the two southerly wheels on the paved portion of the road and the two northerly wheels on the unpaved part. The highway was sixty feet in width, the paved portion being eighteen feet wide. The rear light was burning, as were the headlights on the forward portion of the car. At the time of the accident plaintiff had alighted from her car and, having crossed and recrossed the road, was walking in a westerly direction on the northerly side of the road about three feet north of the paved portion thereof and about fifteen feet from her automobile.

[601]

Defendant approached plaintiff from behind and, as the court found, so negligently drove his automobile as to run upon and over plaintiff, inflicting serious injuries.

Among other findings were those to the effect that defendant violated the laws of the state of California by failing to sound his horn and by failing to turn to the left to pass the plaintiff’s car. There was a general finding of defendant’s negligence and more specific findings: “That said defendant carelessly and negligently failed to sound any horn or suitable signal upon approaching plaintiff’s automobile standing on the highway.

“That the vision of the defendant through the windshield of his machine was obscured by the reflection of the headlight of a machine approaching from his rear.