(Download) "Bertha Newton v. M. Gretter and John" by Supreme Court of North Dakota " Book PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Bertha Newton v. M. Gretter and John
- Author : Supreme Court of North Dakota
- Release Date : January 15, 1931
- Genre: Law,Books,Professional & Technical,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 79 KB
Description
This is an appeal from a judgment for the plaintiff, for personal injury in an automobile accident. Plaintiff and her husband live at the town of Sheldon, North Dakota, and on Thanksgiving Day, 1929, they drove in their Ford automobile from Sheldon, a distance of six miles, to Enderlin to spend the day and evening with the plaintiff's father and mother. They traveled on highway ""Ransom County A,"" that being the direct road between Enderlin and Sheldon. They started home about 10:30 or 11 o'clock at night. After they had driven about a half mile the head light on the right hand side went out. En route there is a tree claim and trees extending for a full half mile on the south side of the road. Along this part of the highway the snow had drifted and was about eight inches deep on the north side of the road and from three to six inches deep on the south side. The traffic was along the south side of the road and there were three meandering crooked ruts in the icy, hard, snow-packed road, three or four inches deep at the point where the accident happened. All traffic was in these ruts and the plaintiff and her husband claim that as they were traveling in the south ruts they saw the defendants' car approaching with ""terrific speed,"" and they turned out of the ruts to the right hand side of the road and stopped to let the defendants pass. They testified that when they stopped, ""their car was straddling the extreme south rut so that the center rut and the north rut were open with sufficient space for defendants' car to pass in safety;"" that the left hand light in their car was bright and lit up the road for a distance of two hundred feet; that defendants' car was a quarter of a mile away when they turned out of the ruts; that defendants' car came on at a terrific speed with but one light; that they could not tell which light, in the distance, but saw later that it was the light on the right hand side of the car; that when the car was ten or twelve feet away they realized that they were going to be struck; that they were struck, the rim of the left hand light on defendants' car making an impression of a ring on the radiator of the Ford car. The Ford car was lifted up and thrown back some ten feet and lay on its side south of the road, partly in the ditch, with defendants' car right up against it. The testimony of the plaintiff and her husband is corroborated in some respect by Roy Torfin. He said: ""We took particular notice to the place where George had driven up and stopped and we kicked the snow aside and found that his right wheels were as near to the shoulder of the road as he could possibly get without going into the ditch."" Q. ""Did you see the marks of the wheels of his car -- could you discern them? A. We did in the snow. The left front wheels of George Newton's car were from eight to ten inches from the southernmost rut on that road. I could tell from the marks in the snow the point in which George's front wheels had stopped; he made a new track where these wheel tracks ended. The car had been shoved back and the back end was in a ditch. The imprint of the head light of the Pontiac was on the radiator of the Ford.""