The District Court did not err in permitting witnesses to testify as to facts from which it could be inferred that Petticrew was the agent of the appellant in the management of the premises and receiving notice of defective condition. Pugh v. Akron-Chicago Transportation Co., 64 Ohio App. 479, 489, 28 N.E.2d 1015. Since the appellant operated the building, it must have operated it through some agent. While appellant denies that Petticrew was acting for it, and points to the fact that Petticrew was employed by one Shimmon, a so-called "property manager," appellant produces no one except Petticrew who had any connection with operation of the building.
XII. Furthermore, since an emergency is characteristically transitory it may be said to have ceased when, under all the facts and circumstances a reasonable time has elapsed within which to dispositively resolve all elements of the exigency prompting the negligent conduct sought to be legally excused (illustratively, stopping or parking a vehicle on a public highway). See Pugh v. Akron-Chicago Transp. Co., 64 Ohio App. 479, 28 N.E.2d 1015, 1023 (1940), aff'd 137 Ohio St. 164, 28 N.E.2d 501 (1940); cf. LaPlante v. State, 200 Misc. 396, 107 N.Y.S.2d 615, 616-617 (1940), aff'd 303 N.Y. 648, 101 N.E.2d 762; 278 App. Div. 739, 103 N.Y.S.2d 669 (1951). Here again such issue is ordinarily determinable by the trier of the fact.
(Emphasis added.) McCoy could not complain if it had been sued individually nor could it have claimed exoneration on account of Chase's negligence. Pugh v. Akron-Chicago Transportation Co., 64 Ohio App. 479, affirmed, 137 Ohio St. 164. 3 Ohio Jurisprudence 2d 635, Appellate Review, Section 684, lays down this principle:
In Szabo v. Tabor Ice Cream Co., 37 Ohio App. 42, 46, 174 N.E. 18, 19, it was stated that the intervention of a responsible human agency between the defendant's alleged wrongful act and the injury complained of did not absolve the defendant from liability if his negligence and that of the intervening human agency co-operated in bringing about the injury. In Pugh v. Akron-Chicago Transportation Co., 64 Ohio App. 479, 486, 28 N.E.2d 1015, 1019, 1020, it was said again that to relieve a person from the consequences of his negligence it was not enough that the negligent act or omission of another was nearest in the order of events to the injury nor that without it the injury would not have occurred; that to have this effect it must have been the efficient, independent and self-producing cause, disconnected from the negligence of the first person; and that, if the intervening event was one which was not entirely improbable, and that the defendant's negligence was an essential link in the chain of causation, the causal connection between the defendant's negligence and the plaintiff's damage was not broken. 5. If the accident was the result of defendants' negligence are they legally responsible therefor to this plaintiff?
To the degree that the facts here were before the trial court and thus before this court they would permit reasonable inferences that the plaintiff was free from negligence, that the driver of the car behind plaintiff was negligent by being in violation of the assured clear distance ahead statute, and that but for the negligence of the defendant Houtz in stopping or parking the collision would never have occurred. See also Pugh v. Akron-Chicago Transportation Co., 32 Ohio Law Abs. 159 (affirmed 137 Ohio St. 164). In these circumstances the conclusion that defendant's negligence was not the proximate cause of plaintiff's injuries could not be drawn as a matter of law.
Thus, if the standard of the statute could be applied at all, it was misapplied. It appears the trial court, on the issue of ordinary care, also gave consideration to whether Joyce Jones left a clear and unobstructed portion of the highway opposite her standing vehicle for the free passage of other vehicles, as prescribed by Section 4511.66, Revised Code. Defendant contends, and it appears, that the trial court may have applied an interpretation of former Section 6310-27, General Code, appearing in Pugh v. Akron-Chicago Transportation Co., 64 Ohio App. 479, at 493 wherein this court said: "Free passage of the road, in the sense it is used in the second prohibiton, means free passage of vehicles in the ordinary course of traffic on the improved portion of the road, that is, the unconfined and unrestrained passage of vehicles moving in one direction past vehicles moving in the same or in an opposite direction on the improved portion of the road, and this prohibition contemplates a sufficient width of the improved portion of the road being left unobstructed to permit the free passage of motor vehicles in separate adjacent lanes of traffic."