Opinion
34555.
DECIDED MAY 13, 1953.
Action for damages. Before Judge Nichols. Floyd Superior Court. January 10, 1953.
George Anderson, E. J. Clower, for plaintiff in error.
Matthews, Maddox Bell, contra.
The petition showed on its face that the plaintiff's injuries were proximately caused by his own negligence; therefore the court did not err in sustaining the general demurrer thereto and in dismissing the action.
DECIDED MAY 13, 1953.
R. C. Anderson sued Southern Railway Company for damages arising out of a collision between the plaintiff's automobile and a train of the defendant, allegedly due to the defendant's negligence. The petition alleged in substance: that on May 3, 1951, at about 10 p. m., the plaintiff was driving his automobile in a westerly direction over and upon what is known as the Furnace Road, a paved public road and highway in Floyd County, Georgia; that as the plaintiff was operating his automobile at a speed of 35 to 40 miles per hour upon such road, his vision was attracted to another automobile in front of him on the road, its rear lights or reflectors being visible to him; that as he approached such vehicle he saw that it was stopped, facing in the same direction and in the same lane of traffic as he was traveling, with its front lights turned off; that the plaintiff, who was unfamiliar with said road, kept his vision directed on said vehicle, fearing it might be preparing to turn to the left or back up; that as the plaintiff approached to within 10 or 12 feet of the rear of said vehicle, he turned his automobile to the left to go around the vehicle, when suddenly and without warning and notice he was confronted by a string of box cars, they being part of a train operated by the defendant, parked on the public crossing 25 to 30 feet in front of him and completely blocking the passage of traffic along said Furnace Road; that the plaintiff immediately applied the brakes of his automobile, but, on account of the proximity of the train, was unable to stop and avoid a collision with it, and he crashed into and under a box car of the defendant's train, which was across and completely blocking the road and which was unlighted and of a color that blended with the darkness so effectively as to give the plaintiff no notice of its presence at a distance within which he could have stopped his car before colliding with it; that the box cars were dark in color, blending with the night and were not lighted, and there were no other lights in the immediate area, and for said reasons the defendant's box cars were not visible to the plaintiff until he was too close upon them to stop; that the approaches to such railroad crossing on the eastern side were not marked, there being no letters, words, signs, symbols or marks on the sides of or across the road, and there were no cross-arms to warn the plaintiff, who was approaching from the east, of the presence either of the train or of the crossing itself; that the defendant provided no watchman, flagman, signal light, fuse, cross-arms, bell, gong, or any other kind of device or instrument to warn the plaintiff of the train parked on said crossing, or to assist the plaintiff in anticipating and discovering its presence there; that such crossing is a grade crossing, outside the city limits of any municipality, and is traveled with great frequency by the general public, and it is dangerous and a hazard to the safety of the traveling public to maintain said crossing as such and to park trains thereon without erecting and maintaining warning signs putting the public on notice of its location and nature; that at the time the defendant did not have erected at the eastern approaches to said crossing on its main line a white sign with red letters thereon raised not less than 10 feet from the ground and not less than 30 inches by 40 inches in size, on the right-hand side of the eastern approach to said crossing, approximately 100 feet from the rails of said railroad track, or at any other point nearer said track on the eastern side, lettered with the words, "Georgia Law — Stop — Unsafe R. R. Crossing," in letters not less than 9 inches in height; nor did the defendant have a sign similar in size and shape to the sign just referred to, reading, "R. R. Crossing — Slow Down to 6 Miles — Ga. Law," erected on the said east side of such crossing, as it was its duty to do; that the defendant did have erected on the right-hand side of the public crossing on Furnace Road on the approach from the west the usual cross-arm indicating a railroad crossing, but at the time of the collision the defendant had for some 10 minutes or more parked its train across said crossing in such a negligent manner as to completely obscure the said cross-arm from the vision of persons, including the plaintiff, traveling in a westerly direction along Furnace Road and approaching the crossing from the east; that, after the plaintiff's automobile struck the box car, the plaintiff was trapped inside his automobile and remained there about five minutes while the defendant's train negligently and carelessly moved from 10 to 20 feet, dragging the plaintiff's automobile with him trapped inside, along the tracks; that the plaintiff was injured in enumerated particulars. The court sustained a general demurrer to the petition and dismissed the action, and the plaintiff excepts.
It is contended by the defendant that the plaintiff was negligent in the particulars alleged in the petition, and that such negligence was the proximate cause of the collision and the plaintiff's damages. The plaintiff alleged that he was traveling at a speed of 35 to 40 miles per hour, that his vision was attracted to a stopped automobile in front of him on the road, that he kept his vision directed on such automobile, that, as he approached to within 10 or 12 feet of the rear of the stopped automobile, he turned his automobile to the left to go around such automobile, when he was confronted by the defendant's train parked 25 or 30 feet in front of him. Construing the petition most strongly against the plaintiff on demurrer, it alleges that the plaintiff was traveling at a speed of 35 to 40 miles per hour, and that without reducing his speed and without taking his vision from the stopped automobile to look ahead of him, he drove around such stopped automobile and thereupon became confronted with the defendant's train. A plaintiff is not entitled to recover if his injuries were caused by his own negligence, or if by the exercise of ordinary care he could have discovered the defendant's negligence and could have avoided the consequences thereof. Code § 105-603. While questions of negligence, comparative negligence, and proximate cause are ordinarily questions for a jury, if a petition shows on its face that the plaintiff's own negligence proximately caused his injuries, the case will be resolved in favor of the defendant on demurrer. Central of Georgia Ry. Co. v. Tapley, 145 Ga. 792, 793 (5, 5a) ( 89 S.E. 841); Haddon v. Savannah Electric Power Co. 36 Ga. App. 183 ( 136 S.E. 285(; Athens Ry. Elec. Co. v. McKinney, 16 Ga. App. 741, 746 ( 86 S.E. 83). This is such a case. The stopped automobile did not suddenly appear before the plaintiff. He knew of its presence and the fact that it was stopped. Under such facts the plaintiff, in passing the stopped automobile at a speed of 35 to 40 miles per hour, and without taking his vision from such automobile to ascertain or attempt to ascertain that the way ahead was clear and safe for passing, was not in the exercise of ordinary care and such negligence proximately caused his injuries. The fact that the plaintiff was unfamiliar with the road and did not know for what reason the stopped automobile had stopped did not relieve him of the duty of using ordinary care in ascertaining or attempting to ascertain whether it was safe to pass the stopped automobile under the circumstances alleged.
As to the allegation that the defendant was negligent in "failing to discover and extricate plaintiff and his car from the dangerous and precarious position resulting from said collision before suddenly starting said train and dragging plaintiff's car, with him trapped in it, 10 or 20 feet, further injuring and damaging plaintiff and his car," the petition does not allege facts showing that the defendant knew of the situation and the plaintiff's position of peril or in the exercise of ordinary care should have known thereof.
The court did not err in sustaining the general demurrer and in dismissing the action.
Judgment affirmed. Sutton, C. J., and Worrill, J., concur.