Eagans v. Key System Transit Lines

BRAZIL, J. pro tem.* This appeal is by the defendant bus company and its driver from a judgment of $30,000 entered pursuant to a jury verdict, as such judgment was modified by the trial court from an original amount of $40,000 in its ruling on defendants’ motion for a new trial. The trial took six days, the record of which discloses an extensive in[14]quiry by both sides of the facts of the case, particularly with relation to damages.

The evidence need not here be set forth in great detail, except insofar as it may be helpful in understanding the size of the judgment, for the appellants have no quarrel with any of the trial court’s rulings, the instructions or the jury’s finding on liability. They claim that the verdict as regards damages is without foundation in the evidence and therefore under the circumstances it is a question of law, not of fact, whether the judgment finds any support in the evidence.

Troy Eagans, a husky, young (32) driver of heavy duty trucks, a former army paratrooper, on returning in his car from his job at Bigge Drayage Company, about 5 in the afternoon of July 28, 1955, got into an accident, which was the basis of his action against the defendants. While stopped in traffic on an Oakland street, with his foot on the brake, he was struck from behind by one, of defendant’s buses. The collision was hard enough to skid the plaintiff's car forward about a ear length, the skid marks of that length appearing on the-pavement. When the accident occurred, plaintiff having no notice of its imminence, his head was jerked back and then forward, his arm went through the steering wheel and his hard McDonald hat was jerked from his head and fell to the floor.

Right at the scene of the accident it did not appear that the plaintiff was seriously, if at all, hurt for the most he says of his feeling at that time and place is that he “was not comfortable.” After a few minutes discussion, looking around to see the extent of the damage to the two vehicles and the exchange of driver information, the two drivers got into their motor vehicles and went their respective ways. A few minutes later and several blocks from the place where the accident occurred, the plaintiff stopped at his mother-in-law’s house to call his wife to let her know he would be late getting home. While telephoning he fell to the floor, although not unconscious; his head started aching severely, like it was splitting open, and he became aware of low back pain. Soon thereafter he went to a hospital for emergency treatment, returning home the same night with a hard collar applied to his neck.