147 A. 20 | Conn. | 1929
As the decedent was riding upon the seat of a truck which was proceeding easterly toward Manchester his hat blew off. Thereupon the driver of the truck stopped it near the right side of the paved roadway, with its rear end about four feet and four inches away from a single track railway of the defendant company and its front somewhat further away. The hat came to rest on the pavement of the roadway in the rear of the truck. The decedent stood up, looked around to see where his hat was and then got off the truck on the side nearest the track. He was struck and killed by a trolley car of the defendant company which was being operated in a westerly direction. At the time he was struck he was about opposite the middle of the truck, which was fourteen feet long. The evidence was in conflict as to the position of the trolley car when he alighted, and its speed, and consequently as to the time which must have elapsed between his alighting and the accident; and no witness claimed to have seen him from the time he started to dismount until he was struck.
The plaintiff relies upon the version of the accident given by his own witnesses and the inferences he draws therefrom and no good purpose would be served by considering the case from the very contrary version given by the motorman of the trolley as a witness for the defendant. According to the driver of the truck, at the time the decedent alighted the trolley car was *561
just coming over the brow of a hill about five hundred feet away. This testimony, it is true, might have been discredited by the jury because of a written statement claimed to have been given by him soon after the accident in which he said that the decedent started to get down from the truck about the time the front of the trolley passed it; but the jury were entitled to accept his sworn testimony upon the witness stand, particularly as it was corroborated by that of a passenger in the trolley, also a witness for the plaintiff, who stated that as she sat in it when it came over the hill and began to descend toward the truck she saw the truck and then and thereafter observed no one in the seat except the driver. While the motorman gave the speed of the trolley as not over ten miles an hour at any time between the top of the hill and the place of the accident and stated that he slowed down to five miles as he approached the truck, this witness on the other hand stated that the trolley seemed to be going "at great speed," "rapidly" and that it never slackened up; and there was also other evidence that it went one hundred and eighty feet after striking the decedent before it came to a stop. If the testimony of the motorman as to the speed of the car were accepted, it would result that more than thirty-three seconds elapsed between the time the decedent alighted from the truck and the moment of the accident; but of course the jury were entitled to accept the testimony of the passenger as to the speed of the car, and if they did so, they might have concluded that a less time had elapsed; but how long a time would have been conjectural, for such expressions as the witness used are entitled to but little weight as definite statements of speed. Swayne v. Connecticut Co.,
There is no error.
In this opinion HINMAN and BANKS, J., concurred; WHEELER, C. J., and HAINES, J., dissented.