43 A.2d 664 | Conn. | 1945
The defendant, arrested on a bench warrant issued by the Court of Common Pleas for New Haven County, was found guilty, in a trial to the court without a jury, of driving an automobile recklessly, in violation of 231f of the 1941 Supplement to the General Statutes, and has appealed. His first assignment of error is that the trial court could not properly, upon all the evidence, find him guilty. The essential facts found are supported by the evidence. Briefly summarized, they state the following situation. On a clear night two men, Ematrudo and Guarino, desiring to board a trolley car which was approaching, stepped into the street and proceeded until they were some ten feet out from the curb. The trolley was slowing down to stop for them. The defendant, driving his car in the same direction as the trolley and a little behind it, was proceeding at a speed of twenty-five miles an hour. In order to pass the trolley car as it was slowing down, he increased his speed to about forty miles an hour. He admitted that he saw the men in the street ahead of him. He finally put his brakes on hard, but his car did not stop until after the men, seeing it bearing down upon them, had hastily run onto the tracks in front of the trolley, which had not then reached them and which was immediately stopped. Upon these facts, the trial court could reasonably *249 reach the conclusion that the defendant was guilty of reckless driving as defined in the statute.
The defendant had been previously arraigned in the City Court of New Haven on a charge, growing out of the same occurrence, that he had violated 233f of the 1941 Supplement to the General Statutes, which penalizes operators of motor vehicles who pass trolley cars which have stopped, or, under certain circumstances not present here, which are about to stop, to take on or discharge passengers. He had been found not guilty. As the offense charged against him in the City Court was entirely different from that alleged in the Court of Common Pleas, he could not plead former conviction or double jeopardy as a defense. His claim in support of his contention that the trial court could not in this case find him guilty of reckless driving is that it was precluded from finding facts contrary to those which had been determined by the judgment of the City Court. In a criminal, as well as in a civil case, the doctrine of res adjudicata requires that a judgment in a former action between the same parties be held conclusive as to any issue therein determined. United States v. Oppenheimer,
Ematrudo, called by the state as a witness, having testified that after the defendant had stopped his car he got out, was asked: "Then what happened?" The trial court, over objection by the defendant, admitted the question. It appears from the discussion between counsel before the ruling was made that the state expected, by the question, to elicit testimony, as in fact it did, that the defendant struck Ematrudo, knocking him to the ground, where he lay unconscious; and the state claimed the right to prove this conduct as tending to establish the mental condition which characterizes recklessness. This was the basis upon which the court admitted the evidence. A person is guilty of reckless misconduct when he intentionally does an act, or fails to do an act in violation of his duty, with knowledge of the serious danger to others involved in it or of facts which would disclose that danger to a reasonable man. Mooney v. Wabrek,
There is error, the judgment is set aside and a new trial is ordered.
In this opinion the other judges concurred,