Gamwell v. Key System Transit Lines

BRAY, J. Defendant appeals from a judgment of $7,500 awarded plaintiff by a jury in an action for personal injuries. Defendant’s contentions are (1) that as a matter of law the evidence is insufficient to support the verdict, and (2) that the doctrine of res ipsa loquitur could not apply because of allegations of the complaint.

Evidence

Taking the evidence and the reasonable inferences therefrom most strongly in favor of plaintiff, as we are required to do, the following is a summary of it. Plaintiff, a 77-year-old school teacher, was boarding one of defendant’s buses. She had “both feet inside the bus” when, without any warning, the folding doors between which she was entering closed on her. “I was just clinched right there. I didn’t know anything from then on until I found myself in the gutter.” She explained “clinched” as meaning that she was struck by the doors. The next thing she knew she was being helped out of the gutter and taken into a nearby drug store where they put her in a chair. A man came up to her and asked what had happened to her. She answered “The bus driver closed the doors on me.” The man said, “Well, I am the bus driver,” and nothing more.

1. Sufficiency of the Evidence.

Defendant’s brief is mainly made up of arguments why the evidence of defendant should be accepted rather than the testimony of plaintiff, which arguments would be of considerable value to a jury, but are of no value to an appellate court, which may not resolve conflicts in the evidence. Thus the fact that a woman passenger in the bus and the bus operator testified that no one was entering the bus when it started up and the doors closed, and in other respects contradicted plaintiff’s version of the accident, did not dispel as a matter of law the inference of negligence deducible from plaintiff’s own testimony. It was defendant’s theory that plaintiff’s injuries came from her falling against a hydrant on the sidewalk, although there was no direct evidence that she so fell. Defendant argues that the inference of negligence was dispelled by the physical facts. While that conclusion and its theory of the cause of plaintiff’s injuries are reasonably deducible from the evidence, they are not compelled by the evidence. The conclusions of the jury are at least equally reasonable. We have studied the transcript [310]and conclude that while a finding to the contrary of that made by the jury would have been supported, the finding which the jury made is well supported and that this is purely a factual case in which the jury resolved, as it was its duty to do, the conflict in the evidence.