R. H. Geoffroy & Co. v. Faria

WARD, J. This is an appeal by defendants from a judgment awarding plaintiff compensation for damage to hauling equipment and its load as the result of a mishap on the highway. The ease was tried without a jury.

At the time of the accident plaintiff’s employee Louis Vacarella, driving in an easterly direction a semi-tractor, to which was attached a trailer, was transporting bottled beer, weighing approximately sixteen tons, from San Jose to Modesto. The highway along which he was proceeding has two lanes and is sixteen feet wide, with a two foot shoulder and a ditch on each side. Just ahead of plaintiff and moving in the same direction was an empty flat-bed truck with separate trailer attached. This equipment belonged to defendants Faria and was operated by one of their employees, W. K. Moore, who was accompanied by a helper. Moore had been having trouble with the engine of his truck and there is testimony that at the time of the accident its motor was dead and he was attempting to roll it on a slight down grade to a garage just ahead and on the left side of the road. There is varying testimony that his speed at the time was from five to twenty miles an hour. As Vacarella approached defendants’ equipment he put on his brakes and reduced his speed from forty miles an hour, at which he had been driving, to thirty or thirty-five miles, and testified that when he was fifty or seventy-five feet behind defendant he blew his horn and attempted to pass defendants’ truck on the left. When the front of his truck, then on the northerly side of the highway, was twenty or thirty feet to the rear of the equipment preceding him he saw its driver signal for a left hand turn, and immediately execute such maneuver, thus bringing his vehicles directly in the path of the on-coming truck; that the vehicles of defendants were actually about a foot over the white line when the signal was given. Vacarella applied his brakes and turned to the right in an effort to pass on that side, but he found that part of the “large equipment” [167]ahead of him was still across the highway sufficiently to prevent his passing. In order to avoid the ditch at his right, he attempted to get back to the center of the highway, but the swaying trailer overturned and its weight pulled the truck with it. Moore, apparently unaware of the accident, according to plaintiff continued to move along the left side of the road for some little distance before turning into the garage above mentioned. There is conflicting testimony as to the point at which Moore turned into the left side of the highway, and also as to the place where a signal indicating his intention to do so was given.