Christiansen v. St. Louis Public Service Co.

62 S.W.2d 828, 333 Mo. 408, 1933 Mo. LEXIS 634
CourtSupreme Court of Missouri
DecidedAugust 3, 1933
StatusPublished
Cited by21 cases

This text of 62 S.W.2d 828 (Christiansen v. St. Louis Public Service Co.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Missouri primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Christiansen v. St. Louis Public Service Co., 62 S.W.2d 828, 333 Mo. 408, 1933 Mo. LEXIS 634 (Mo. 1933).

Opinion

*412 ATWOOD, J.

This ease, recently lodged with the writer, is an appeal taken by the St. Louis Public Service Company, a corporation, from a judgment for $18,000 rendered' against it and William Shelton, on a verdict for that amount in favor of plaintiff, Bertha Christiansen, in an action for personal injuries alleged to have been directly and proximately caused by the negligence of both defendants in so managing and operating a street car and an automobile that they collided with each other and the automobile was thereby forced upon the sidewalk where plaintiff was waiting to board said street car so that it struck and seriously injured her.

The answer of defendant Public Service Company was a general denial. Defendant Shelton was not represented by counsel and filed no answer but appeared and testified at the trial with other witnesses in his own behalf and did not appeal from the judgment rendered.

Errors are assigned to action of the trial court in overruling defendant Public Service Company’s demurrer to the evidence interposed at the close of all the evidence in the case; to the giving of plaintiff’s requested instruction numbered 1; on the ground that the verdict against both defendants, - returned under instructions numbered 1 and 2, is contrary thereto in that said instructions are contradictory; and on the ground that the verdict was excessive.

Appellant’s first point, as set forth in its brief, is that the court “erred in refusing to peremptorily direct a verdict for appellant at the close of all the evidence in the case, for the reason that the evi *413 dence showed that plaintiff’s injury was proximately due to the negli: gence of the defendant Shelton in the operation of his automobile, and plaintiff failed to carry the burden resting upon her to adduce substantial evidence that some such act or acts of negligence on the part of appellant in- the operation of its ear directly and proximately contributed to produce such injury.”

Plaintiff went to trial on her amended petition containing a number of specifications of negligence as to each defendant, and alleging that “as a direct and proximate result of the joint and concurrent negligence and carelessness of both defendants, as aforesaid,” she was injured as therein described. As stated in appellant’s brief: “Plaintiff’s petition proceeds upon the theory that appellant’s agents and servants were guilty of negligence in the operation and management of the street car in question; that defendant Shelton was guilty of negligence in the operation and management of his automobile, and that plaintiff’s injury was proximately due to the concurring negligence of both defendants.”

In ruling, a demurrer to the evidence the question is whether a case was made for the jury upon any issue presented by the pleadings. If there was sufficient evidence to go to the jury on any specification of negligence submitted it is unnecessary to consider other specifications pleaded but not submitted. -The negligence pleaded and submitted as to defendant Public Service Company was that its agents, servants and employees, in the management and operation of said street car saw or by the exercise of ordinary care could have seen said automobile ahead of said street car, and failed to exercise ordinary care to move said street car under such speed and to have it under such control as to avoid a dangerous collision with said automobile. A similar charge of negligence was submitted as to defendant Shelton’s operation and control of his automobile.

It is apparently conceded that under the evidence defendant Shelton was negligent in the management and operation of his automobile as charged and submitted, and that such negligence was at least a substantial factor in bringing about plaintiff’s injury. Appellant contends that it was the sole factor, while respondent insists that under all the evidence defendant Public Service Company was guilty of negligence pleaded and submitted which was also a substantial factor in bringing about such injury and that the concurring negligence of both defendants was the proximate cause. The law is well settled in this State that “if a.defendant is negligent and his negligence combines with that of another, or with any other independent, intervening cause, he is liable although his negligence was not the sole negligence or the sole proximate .cause, and although his negligence without such other independent, intervening .cause would not have produced the injury.” [Harrison v. Kansas City Electric Co., 195 Mo. 606, 625, 93 S. W. 951; Miller v. United Rail *414 ways Co., 155 Mo. App. 528, 541, 134 S. W. 1045.] See, also, Restatement, Tohrts (Tent. Draft No. 8), section 314 and comments.

Plaintiff’s evidence showed that on February 5, 1928, the date of the accident, at the intersection of Twelfth and Olive Streets Twelfth Street was 150 feet wide from building line to building line forty feet of which space was occupied by a twenty-foot sidewalk on each side, and Olive Street was sixty feet wide from building line to building line twenty-four feet of this space being occupied by a twelve-foot sidewalk on each side. Defendant Public Service Company had two parallel lines of street car tracks near the middle of each street, the west rail on Twelfth Street being forty-seven feet and four inches east of the outer curb of the west sidewalk and the north rail on Olive Street being ten feet and six inches south of the outer curb of the north sidewalk.

Plaintiff testified that about ten o’clock on the morning of the accident she was standing near the Star Building on Olive Street about six or eight feet west of the building line on Twelfth Street waiting for a westbound Olive Street car; that she saw the street car approaching the east side of Twelfth Street where it stopped for passengers and then started up; that she walked to within three or four feet of the Olive Street curb, signaled to the motorman with her hand and saw him looking right at her; that the street car was going fast; that she remembered seeing an automobile turning west from Twelfth Street on the north side of Olive at a pretty good speed “and the street ear right in back of it and it — the force of the street car hitting the machine swayed it right up on the sidewalk;” that before she could move more than a step or two the front part of the automobile knocked her down, ran partly over her and then rolled back into the street. On cross-examination she said that in the collision between the street ear and the automobile before the latter struck her the front part of the street car came in contact with the left rear wheel of the automobile.

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Bluebook (online)
62 S.W.2d 828, 333 Mo. 408, 1933 Mo. LEXIS 634, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/christiansen-v-st-louis-public-service-co-mo-1933.