Haase v. Central Union High School District

BARNARD, P. J. This is an action for damages for injuries suffered by the minor plaintiff while riding on a bus owned by the defendant school district and driven by the defendant DeVelbiss. The accident happened while the bus was meeting a truck owned and operated by the other individual defendants. A jury found in favor of the plaintiffs and against both sets of defendants. From the judgment which followed the school district and the driver of its bus have appealed. For convenience the minor will be referred to as the plaintiff, the driver of the bus as the appellant [103]and the driver of the truck, who is not appealing, as the defendant.

The accident in question happened on November 13, 1934, some miles west of Fresno, on McKinley Avenue which runs east and west, and a short distance west of Jameson Avenue which intersects the first named road. At the northeast corner of the intersection of these roads is the yard of an elementary school. About 4 o’clock on that afternoon the appellant started from the high school, located about a mile east of this intersection, with his bus loaded with students, lie drove west on McKinley Avenue at 30 miles an hour, slowed down to 20 or 25 miles as he passed the elementary school, and proceeded across the intersection in a westerly direction. The plaintiff was seated in the bus on the seat behind the driver with his left arm on the sill of an open window. A short distance west of the intersection referred to is a small bridge over a canal which crosses McKinley Avenue at right angles. This bridge extended for about 20 feet along McKinley Avenue and was 18 feet 6 inches wide with railings along its north and south sides. As the school bus approached this bridge the truck driven by the defendant, loaded with sweat boxes, approached the bridge from the west coming east. Just after the bus had left the bridge the plaintiff cried out that his arm was broken and the appellant turned around and drove back to the bridge. At that time the defendant had stopped about a hundred feet east of the bridge and was picking up a sweat box which lay in the road. This box was partly broken, one end and one side being broken. Another box was also on the ground and splinters and broken pieces of a box lay along .the center of the bridge from near its west end to its east end. The truck was loaded with 31 sweat boxes and while the defendant testified that they did not extend beyond the body of the truck the appellant testified that they extended over the body for 6 or 8 inches. After the accident there was a dent on the upper front portion of the left rear fender of the bus and a clearance light at the top of the left rear corner of the body of the bus was gone. This light was found on the defendant’s truck. That truck had a scratch at the front left side of its flat rack, and an arm signal which extended out from the top of the back of its cab was bent. The height of this signal was approxi