Jonas v. Los Angeles Railway Corp.

MOORE, P. J. Is a woman contributorily negligent who, on a dark, rainy night at an intersection adjacent to a loading platform attempts to cross the track of a car less than 50 feet from her, approaching at a speed of 20 miles per hour ? Such is the question here presented.

This appeal is from the judgment for defendants after verdict against two adult sons who sued for damages alleged to have been suffered by reason of the death of their mother who was killed by the street car within an intersection.

The defendant corporation operates its railway line upon a private right of way down the center of Vermont Avenue. Defendant De Witt was its motorman in charge of the car. Vermont extends from the north across the city and for some miles into the sparsely settled suburban areas to the south. At 110th Street Vermont is 163% feet wide between its curbs. The right of way is about 61 feet in width upon which lies a double track. It is paralleled on both sides by motor traffic highways. Between the two tracks stand the trolley poles. The first one is 19 feet south of the intersection; the second 108 feet; the third 235 feet. Just south of 110th Street for the accommodation of passengers is a concrete waiting platform, 60 feet in length, lying alongside of the east track. The width of 110th Street where it intersects Vermont is 57% feet. At the northwest corner was a 250 candle power light and another 58 feet south of 110th Street on the east side of the avenue. The locus of the accident is thus seen to be open to the view, free of any obstruction other than the darkness and the elements. But for them on the night of January 23, 1941, a motorman would have had a panoramic, if not a clear, view of the intersection in the light projected by the two lamps.

Deceased had been escorted to the northwest corner about 9:35 o’clock by the witness Kalthoff. Because of the rain, according to his testimony, deceased stopped there under the canopy of the service station to await a signal from him at the time she should proceed to the platform to board the north bound car which then stood at the end of the line about six blocks to the south. In arguing the fallacy of the [826]judgment appellants assume that the jury should have found the facts as recited by Kalthoif. It was his recollection that after he had waited on the platform twenty minutes and had observed the car leave its station and reach about 114th Street, Mrs. Jonas started in a “trotting walk” across 110th Street on the west side of Vermont, then easterly toward the track on which the ear was rolling northward; that when she reached that track the car was about 25 feet away; that she proceeded to step upon the track when she was knocked down by the car. He did not say that the speed of the car was excessive. Other testimony fixed its rate of travel by the platform at about 20 miles per hour.