O'Connor v. City & County of San Francisco

207 P.2d 638, 92 Cal. App. 2d 626, 1949 Cal. App. LEXIS 1737
CourtCalifornia Court of Appeal
DecidedJune 28, 1949
DocketCiv. No. 13921
StatusPublished
Cited by5 cases

This text of 207 P.2d 638 (O'Connor v. City & County of San Francisco) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering California Court of Appeal primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
O'Connor v. City & County of San Francisco, 207 P.2d 638, 92 Cal. App. 2d 626, 1949 Cal. App. LEXIS 1737 (Cal. Ct. App. 1949).

Opinion

BRAY, J.

After judgment for defendant in an action for the death of a person struck by a San Francisco streetcar, plaintiffs appealed. They also attempted to appeal from the order denying their motion for new trial. No such appeal lies.

Plaintiffs, son and daughter of the deceased, sue individually and as administrators with the will annexed of her estate.

Grounds of Appeal

1. Insufficiency of the evidence. 2. Erroneous instructions. 3. Prejudicial misconduct of defense counsel.

[629]*6291. Evidence

The evidence clearly shows the negligence of the motorman operating the streetcar. It also clearly shows the contributory negligence of the deceased. There is not a great deal of conflict in the testimony of the witnesses, except, possibly, as to the location of the deceased when struck. The accident occurred at about 2:30 p. m. March 28, 1945, at Market and Fourth Street in San Francisco. At that point there were two sets of tracks on Market Street, for each direction, i. e., east and west. The streetcar was proceeding east on the inner eastbound track. It had stopped at the Emporium a short distance from Fourth Street. One of the passengers pressed the buzzer for the motorman to stop at Fourth Street. Approaching that street the car did not stop but increased its speed. In the opinion of at least two witnesses the .car was going “too fast.” It was a clear, sunny day, and there were no trucks or other vehicles to obstruct the motorman’s view. The bell was not sounded.

The deceased, Mary Heffernan, was 84 years old. Her son described her health at the time of the accident as “very good. ’ ’ However, she was partially blind in one eye, and the autopsy revealed that she had a marked “arteriosclerosis of the cerebral vessels.” Mrs. Heffernan’s original position was in front of a jeweler’s store near the southeast corner of the intersection. She left the curb and started to cross Market from south to north. She was walking with a cane. No other traffic was crossing Market at the time. No witness testified that she used the crosswalk for this purpose. Plaintiffs’ counsel stated in his opening argument that she was about 10 or 15 feet east of the crosswalk. Two witnesses placed her about 20 feet east of the easterly line of the crosswalk. One witness testified “she was not right in that painted white section, she was so near it that she was in it,” although in á statement made shortly after the accident she placed Mrs. Heffernan as crossing 50 to 60 feet east of the crosswalk. Mrs. Heffernan was well out into the street as the car approached. She stepped onto the track when the car was only a short distance away. The motorman had been looting at the witness who was demanding that she be let off the ear. When he saw Mrs. Heffernan, he tried to stop the car, but it was too late. After striking Mrs. Heffernan the car proceeded about half a ear’s length. After being hit by the car Mrs. Heffernan was lying on the westbound car tracks about 10 to 25 feet east of the [630]*630crosswalk. A police officer located at Ellis and Market Streets (a part of the Fourth and Market intersection, and less than 140 feet from the easterly line of the easterly crosswalk), was notified of the accident and at that time the streetcar was just coming to a stop and the traffic signal was “Go” for traffic on Market Street. The signal was set so that the “Go” lasted 30 to 40 seconds. None of the other witnesses noticed the situation of the traffic signal at or near the time of the accident. The streetcar was stopped quickly, its position then being variously described as half a ear’s length beyond the place of the accident, quite a way down the street, and two car lengths past the location of the body. The motorman was not called as a witness.

It is obvious from the record that the evidence was sufficient to sustain the implied finding of the jury that Mrs. Heffernan was crossing the street outside the crosswalk, against the traffic light, and walked onto the tracks in front of the approaching car and was contributorily negligent.

2. Instructions

The most serious point in the case concerns the giving of two of the instructions. (For convenience of reference we have lettered these instructions (A) and (B).) They read: (A) “The tracks of a street railway company are in themselves a sign of danger, and one walking in the vicinity of the tracks of a street railway company ordinarily must exercise his faculties of sight and hearing and watch and listen for ears going in every direction. If he fails so to do, and in consequence thereof is injured, he may be found guilty of contributory negligence and may be denied recovery against the defendant City and County of San Francisco.” (B) “Where the evidence is as consistent with a neglect of duty or care on the part of the decedent, Mary Heffernan, as it is with a neglect of duty or care on the part of the defendant charged with causing the injury, the plaintiffs cannot recover. ”

In Gillette v. San Francisco, 41 Cal.App.2d 758, 764 [107 P.2d 627]1, two instructions which were practically identical •with those above set forth were condemned (with one other not given here) on the ground that “Each instruction wholly ignored the element of proximate cause. Each was, in effect, an instruction to the jury, under the conditions specified in [631]*631each instruction, to bring in a verdict in favor of the defendants. But that was not the law. Although the plaintiff may-have been negligent, if his negligente was not a proximate cause of his injuries it did not constitute a defense. (19 Cal.Jur. 561.) ”—and were inconsistent with the instructions given on the last clear chance doctrine. A minor distinction between the Gillette case and ours is that there, the evidence as to the contributory negligence of the plaintiff was highly conflicting and the plaintiff relied “principally on the application of the doctrine of the last clear chance. ” (P.764.) The question here is whether under the particular facts of this case the giving of the instructions, which were held to be erroneous in the Gillette case, was prejudicial. In this case, the court fully instructed on the last clear chance doctrine. It likewise instructed fully on all phases of the case. In the Gillette ease, the court held that an instruction to the effect (as was given here) that the jury were to consider all the instructions as a whole and not select a single one, was not sufficient to cure the error. It is curious that in the Gillette ease there was no discussion of the many cases which had held that the failure to include proximate cause in a particular instruction was not prejudicial error where the subject had ' been fully covered by other instructions.

An instruction similar to instruction (B) was held not prejudicially erroneous as omitting the element of proximate cause where the jury, as in this case, was fairly and fully instructed elsewhere on the subject of proximate cause and contributory negligence, in Mahoney v. Murray, 140 Cal.App. 206 [35 P.2d 612]. A similar instruction was approved in Miller v. Dollar Steamship Lines, Inc., 19 Cal.App.2d 206, 212 [64 P.2d 1163]. In Jewell v. Bell, 120 Cal.App. 682 [8 P.2d 223

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Bluebook (online)
207 P.2d 638, 92 Cal. App. 2d 626, 1949 Cal. App. LEXIS 1737, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/oconnor-v-city-county-of-san-francisco-calctapp-1949.