Hollowell v. Cameron

LAWLOR, J.

The plaintiffs, husband and wife, brought this action against the defendant for damages for personal injuries received by them in an automobile collision, and for injury to the machine in which they were riding. The case was tried by jury and judgment was entered upon a verdict in favor of plaintiffs. The defendant appeals.

About 8 o’clock on the evening of July 1, 1917, respondents were riding in their Ford automobile along Avenue 64, ■between Los Angeles and Pasadena, and with them was their fifteen months old grandson. Mr. Hollowell was driving, and the machine was traveling at a rate of about twenty miles an hour. He drove to one side to pass another machine, driven by one William Clark Houston, and had just swung hack to the right side of the road, when appellant, in a Stutz car, came up from behind and crashed into the rear end of the Ford. The Ford was overturned and damaged, and respondents were both injured, Mrs. Hollowell being thrown through the top of the ear. The baby escaped injury. Mr. Houston testified: “I saw Mr. Cameron before I got to the accident; he passed me also. I did hear a noise coming before he reached me. I heard a terrific blowing of the horn. . . . He was going fifty miles an hour if he was going a mile.” Henry W. Baker testified: “No, I do not know how fast he was driving. ... I saw he was driving at a terrible rate of speed.” Appellant testified: “I was driving around thirty miles an hour, but not in excess of thirty.”

Appellant bases his claim for reversal upon three contentions—(1) insufficiency of the evidence to justify the verdict, (2) that the verdict is against the law and the evidence, and (3) that certain instructions were erroneous.

1. First as to the sufficiency of the evidence. We quote from appellant’s brief: “The entire testimony of both plaintiff and defendant centered around the light on the rear of

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the machine of the plaintiff. Witnesses for the plaintiff testified that he did have a tail-light on the automobile, but a search of the record will not disclose that any witness for the plaintiff testified that he had a tail-light on his Ford visible for five hundred feet in the rear, as the law requires.” Respondent testified in part as follows: “Q. The front lights you can light from the inside of the ear? A. Yes, sir. Q. The tail-light, you have to get out? A. I would like to make a statement about when I lighted the tail-light. Q. When did you light the tail-light? A. On Fremont Street, about one hundred feet from Third Street, near the Friends Church, here in Los Angeles. Q. At'what time of night or day ? A. 7:45 or a quarter to 8. I know that because I looked at my watch at that time. Q. How did you happen to look at your watch then? A. Because I had not taken the time of day, and that is how I happen to. . . . It was 7:45. . . . The tail-light was in good condition, because I had cleaned it and put oil in that morning.” William Clark Houston testified: “He [Mr. Hollowell] did drive over on to the right-hand side of the road when he passed me. His tail-light was lit at that time,” and that “I saw the tail-light on the Ford and it was lighted.” It follows that the implied finding of the jury that the Ford carried a lighted tail-light is supported by the evidence.