Vincent v. Los Angeles Transit Lines

WOOD, J.—Plaintiffs, husband and wife, commenced this action to recover damages allegedly sustained as the result of a collision between an automobile, which the wife was driving, and a streetcar owned by the defendant Los Angeles Transit Lines. Trial was without a jury. After the wife had testified on direct examination, and before the plaintiffs had rested their case, defendants made a motion for a nonsuit on the ground that plaintiff was guilty of contributory negligence as a matter of law, and the court granted the motion. Plaintiffs appeal from the “judgment,” which in this case is the order granting the motion for nonsuit.

The accident occurred about 6:30 a. m., before daylight, on November 19,1944, at a street intersection on Figueroa Street, when plaintiffs’ automobile collided with defendant’s streetcar as the streetcar was making a left turn. Figueroa Street extends in a general northerly and southerly direction, and at the place where the accident occurred it is intersected by a highway which extends in a general easterly and westerly direction. The part of that highway which extends east of Figueroa Street is known as Pasadena Avenue, and the part of the highway which extends west of Figueroa Street is known as York Boulevard. Figueroa Street is paved, is about 72 feet wide at the southern entrance to the intersection, and is about 62 feet wide at the northern entrance thereof. The west curbs of that street on both sides of the intersection are in line with each other, but the east curb on the north side of the intersection is about 10 feet farther to the west than the east curb on the south side. The York Boulevard entrance to the intersection is about 81 feet wide and the Pasadena Avenue entrance is about 80 feet wide. There is a marked pedestrian crosswalk at each entrance to the intersection, and a boulevard stop sign on each corner. Mechanical traffic signals at the intersection were not in operation at the time of the collision. There are two streetcar tracks on Figueroa Street which, on both sides of the intersection, are approximately in the middle of the street, and those tracks as they extend across the intersection, from the wider south entrance to the narrower north entrance of the intersection, swerve about 10 feet to the west. At a point on those tracks on Figueroa Street about 52 feet south of the intersection two streetcar tracks branch off from the Figueroa streetcar tracks and curve to the west around the southwest corner of the intersection onto York Boulevard. The distance from [197]the center of the intersection to its southwest corner is about 60 feet. The innermost rail of the curved tracks is about 13 feet from the southwest corner of the intersection, and the outermost rail is about 30 feet from that corner and about 30 feet from the center of the intersection. In other words, the curved tracks branch from the Figueroa tracks about 100 feet south of the center of the intersection, and do not go near the center of the intersection, but miss it about 30 feet as they cut across the middle of the southwest quarter of the intersection. There are no eastbound or westbound tracks in the middle of the intersection, and there are no tracks on Pasadena Avenue.