Farmer v. Matsutani

NOURSE, P. J. This action for damages to property and for personal injuries was tried before the court sitting without a jury. Defendants appeal from a judgment entered in favor of plaintiff in the sum of $747.63 plus costs, and from an order denying their motion for a new trial.

The accident occurred on the Pacheco-Concord road, a paved two-lane county highway running east and west, about seven-tenths of a mile east of the town of Pacheco. At this place in the road the shoulder on the south side of the highway has a surface of loose gravel and there is a private driveway on the north side leading to defendant Matsutani’s ranch. On September 24, 1940, at about 7:10 a. m., defendant Toriyama was driving a truck belonging to his employer, defendant Matsutani, in an easterly direction along the highway at a speed of approximately five miles per hour. Plaintiff was following the truck in his automobile at a speed of about [334]forty-five miles per hour and sighted the vehicle when it was approximately one hundred and fifty yards ahead of him. Plaintiff testified that defendant gave a stop signal with his arm, continued for thirty-five feet and then came to a stop; plaintiff stated that at this time he was one hundred and twenty feet to the rear of the truck and was maintaining his speed in order to pass the vehicle. Defendant testified that he made no stop at that point, that he did not give a stop signal and that if he had given such a signal with his arm the truck body would have obscured it from plaintiff’s view.

Plaintiff testified that the truck remained stopped for a second and then without any warning signal turned left across the highway towards defendant Matsutani’s driveway. Defendant driver, on the other hand, stated that he raised the mechanical arm signal for a left turn about one hundred and fifty feet from the driveway, that he slowed down about one hundred feet before reaching his employer’s private road and that when he started to make the left turn plaintiff was about one hundred and fifty feet to the rear; the truck driver testified that at no time did he stop his vehicle diagonally across the driveway. Plaintiff’s story was that as he observed the truck turning towards the left he steered his automobile to the right side of the road with the intention of clearing the rear end of the vehicle. Plaintiff testified that the truck travelled about five feet in an easterly direction, about thirteen feet in a northerly direction and then came to a stop in the middle of the highway leaving only a couple of feet clearance behind it. As a result plaintiff applied his brakes, leaving a seven foot skidmark on the highway, and turned his car to the right in order to avoid colliding with the truck. The automobile skidded on the loose gravel, went out of control, struck a power pole on the shoulder of the highway seventy-two feet east of the point at which it left the pavement and then made a half circle thirty-two feet across the highway. The car came to a stop on the north shoulder of the road facing in a westerly direction with the private driveway to plaintiff’s right and the truck in front of him.