Paup v. American Telephone & Telegraph Co.

247 N.W. 411, 124 Neb. 550, 1933 Neb. LEXIS 68
CourtNebraska Supreme Court
DecidedMarch 16, 1933
DocketNo. 28365
StatusPublished
Cited by12 cases

This text of 247 N.W. 411 (Paup v. American Telephone & Telegraph Co.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Nebraska Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Paup v. American Telephone & Telegraph Co., 247 N.W. 411, 124 Neb. 550, 1933 Neb. LEXIS 68 (Neb. 1933).

Opinion

Eberly, J.

This is an action at law to recover damages, growing out of an accident, to an automobile owned by plaintiff. A trial to a jury resulted in a verdict and judgment against the defendant, American Telephone & Telegraph Company, and for plaintiff, in the sum of $600, and a verdict in favor of defendant Short. From the order overruling its motion for a new trial, the telephone company appeals.

It appears that plaintiff, an automobile dealer, was driving- a new Nash automobile, just delivered to him by the distributors at Omaha, eastward from that city to his place of business at Denison, Iowa. En route he arrived at the Douglas street bridge between Omaha, Nebraska, and Council Bluffs, Iowa, about 8 o’clock a. m. on January 9, 1931. It was a foggy, misty morning. His automobile lights were burning, and he was traveling about fifteen miles an hour. Shortly before plaintiff arrived at the bridge, a Ford car, belonging to the defendant telephone company, with three employees therein, parked upon the north side of the bridge, headed west. Two of these employees then crossed to the south side of the bridge with certain tools and materials for the purpose of making repairs on the property of the telephone company, and while they were thus engaged a Dodge car, not involved in the accident, ran into the rear of the telephone car in such a manner as to become engaged thereto. Thereupon the foreman of the telephone company crew ordered Mr. Montgomery, a fellow employee, to go to the east tollhouse at the east entrance to the bridge and instruct the toll attendant to stop westbound traffic. What this employee did thereafter is a matter of disputed evidence. Testimony of plaintiff, if believed, establishes that, in carrying out this order, after delivering his message to the east tollhouse attendant, and on his return to the telephone company car, the employee, Montgomery, ran toward plaintiff’s automobile, as it was being driven eastward over the bridge, and flagged it [552]*552to a complete stop. At this time the truck of defendant Short was traveling about 75 feet in the rear of plaintiff’s car. The truck driver observed the plaintiff’s car stopping, and that there was ample room to pass to the left of plaintiff’s car. The intervening cars prevented the truck driver from seeing Montgomery or observing his stop signals. He turned to the left, slowed down, and started to go around the car of plaintiff. When he arrived on a line even with the back footboard of that car, a man, subsequently identified as Montgomery, dashed from in front of the Paup automobile to a position directly in front of this approaching truck, signaling for it to stop. The intervening distance between the approaching truck and the running man, when the latter was first discovered, was such that the truck could not be stopped in time to save Montgomery from serious injury. As the driver of the truck testified: “It was up to me either to hit the man or hit the car.” In the emergency presented, to save the man, he turned his truck quickly to the right and collided with plaintiff’s Nash car, and thereby the damages in suit were caused.

The defendant telephone company insists that the evidence is insufficient to sustain the verdict, and in argument at the bar emphasized the opposing testimony of its own witnesses. But it is plain that the trial jury accepted the version of the accident as given by plaintiff’s witnesses. On this basis their determination is binding upon this tribunal. In the light of the verdict, we accept the view that the jury were justified in determining that defendant Short, driving his truck at a lawful rate Of speed, undertook in a proper manner to pass plaintiff’s car ahead. When he turned to the left and was coming up abreast of it, Montgomery dashed into view and negligently assumed a dangerous position, and to save this man it was necessary for the truck driver to turn his truck promptly to the right. In doing this he crashed into the plaintiff’s car. He was suddenly called to act in an emergency. He was not negligent, and if it be [553]*553conceded that he acted unwisely, it was error in extremis. It follows that the negligence of the telephone company’s servant furnishes the sole and proximate cause. Wyatt v. Chesapeake & P. T. Co., 158 Va. 470, 82 A. L. R. 386; Lammers v. Carstensen, 109 Neb. 475.

In the early case of Scott v. Shepherd, 2 W. Bl. (Eng.) 893, it appears that a “lighted squib, so thrown by the defendant, fell upon the standing of one Yates, who sold gingerbread, etc. That one Willis instantly, and to prevent injury to himself and the said wares of the said Yates, took up the said lighted squib from off the said standing, and then threw it across the said market-house, when it fell upon another standing there of one Ryal, who sold the same sort of wares, who instantly, and to save his own goods from being injured, took up the said lighted squib from off the said standing, and then threw it to another part of the said market-house, and, in so throwing it, struck the plaintiff then in the said market-house in the face therewith, and the combustible' matter then bursting, put out one of the plaintiff’s eyes.” Shepherd was held liable for the injury thus inflicted. The reason is: Here was but a single wrong, the original act of throwing the dangerous missile; and though the plaintiff would not have been harmed by it but for the. subsequent acts of others in throwing it in his direction, yet, as these were instinctive and innocent, it is the same as if a cracker had been flung in his direction which had bounded and rebounded, again and again, before it struck the plaintiff’s eye, and the injury was therefore a natural and proximate result of the original act.

Since this so-called squib case, the principle is well established that: “A tort-feasor is answerable for all the consequences that, in the natural course of events, flow from his unlawful acts, although those results are brought about by the intervening agency of others, provided the intervening agents were set in motion by the primary wrong-doer, or were the natural consequences of his original act.” 1 Cooley, Torts (4th ed.) 114.

[554]*554The following cases illustrate the application of the language just quoted: Pierce v. Conners, 20 Colo. 178; Phillips v. Dewald, 79 Ga. 732; Western & A. R. Co. v. Bailey, 105 Ga. 100; Alabama G. S. R. Co. v. Chapman, 80 Ala. 615; Marchand v. Gulf C. & S. F. R. Co., 20 Tex. Civ. App. 1; Hammill v. Pennsylvania R. Co., 56 N. J. Law, 370; Jackson v. Galveston, H. & S. A. R. Co., 90 Tex. 372; Village of Carterville v. Cook, 129 Ill. 152.

In Hilligas v. Runs, 86 Neb. 68, this court expressly-approved and substantially adopted the statement of the principle above quoted, which is controlling in the instant case. It follows that the evidence before us is ample to sustain a recovery.

As to the challenge to the sufficiency of the petition, the first paragraph or division thereof, after alleging the time and place of the accident, continues: “That while proceeding in a careful and prudent manner eastward the agent, servant and employee of the defendant, American Telephone & Telegraph Company, one Montgomery, suddenly without any warning, reason or cause jumped in front of the automobile of your plaintiff and ordered your plaintiff to stop, which was immediately done, instantaneously and concurrently, and as a result of said negligent acts the truck driven by Samuel L. Short and owned by the defendant William B.

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Bluebook (online)
247 N.W. 411, 124 Neb. 550, 1933 Neb. LEXIS 68, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/paup-v-american-telephone-telegraph-co-neb-1933.