Effect of Statute

Martin v.Herzog

Court of Appeals of New York,1920

228 N.Y.164,126 N.E.814

Cardozo,J.The action is one to recover damages for injuries resulting in death.

Plaintiff and her husband,while driving toward Tarrytown in a buggy on the night of August 21,1915,were struck by the defendant’s automobile coming in the opposite direction.They were thrown to the ground,and the man was killed.At the point of the collision the highway makes a curve.The car was rounding the curve when suddenly it came upon the buggy,emerging,the defendant tells us,from the gloom.Negligence is charged against the defendant,the driver of the car,in that he did not keep to the right of the center of the highway.Negligence is charged against the plaintiff’s intestate,the driver of the wagon,in that he was traveling without lights.There is no evidence tha t the defendant was moving at an excessive speed.There is none of any defect in the equipment of his car.The beam of light from his lamps pointed to the right as the wheels of his car turned along the curve toward the left;and looking in the direction of the plaintiff’s approach,he was peering into the shadow .The case against him must stand,therefore,if at all,upon the divergence of h is course from the center of the highway.The jury found him delinquent and his victim blameless.The Appellate Division reversed,and ordered a new trial.[Plaintiff now appeals to the Court of Appeals.]

… We think the unexcused omission of the statutory signals is more than some evidence of negligence.It is negligence in itself.Lights are intended for the guidance and protection of other travelers on the highway.Highway Law,§329a.By the very terms of the hypothesis,to omit,willfully or heedlessly,the safeguards prescribed by law for the benefit of another that he may be preserved in life or limb,is to fall short of the standard of diligence to which those who live in organized society are under a duty to conform.That,we think,is now the established rule in this state.

In the case at hand,we have an instance of the admitted violation of a statute intended for the protection of travelers on the highway,of whom the defendant at the time was one.Yet the jurors were instructed in effect that they were at liberty in their discretion to treat the omission of lights either as innocent or as culpable.They were allowed to “consider the default as lightly or gravely” as they would(Thomas,J.,in the court below).They might as well have been told that they could use a like discretion in holding a master at fault for the omission of a safety appliance prescribed by positive law for the protection of a workman.Jurors have no dispensing power,by which they may relax the duty that one traveler on the highways owes under the statute to another.It is error to tell them that they have.The omission of these lights was a wrong,and,being wholly unexcused,was also a negligent wrong.No license should have been conceded to the triers of the facts to find it anything else.

We must be on our guard,however,against confusing the question of negligence with that of the causal connection between the negligence and the injury.A defendant who travels without lights is not to pay damages for his fault,unless the absence of lights is the cause of the disaster.A plaintiff who travels without them is not to forfeit the right to damages,unless the absence of lights is at least a contributing cause of the disaster.To say that conduct is negligence is not to say that it is always contributory negligence.“Proof of negligence in the air,so to speak,will not do.” Pollock,Torts (10th Ed.) p.472.

We think,however,that evidence of a collision occurring more than an hour after sundown between a car and an unseen buggy,proceeding without lights,is evidence from which a causal connection may be inferred between the collision and the lack of signals.If nothing else is shown to break the connection,we have a case,prima facie sufficient,of negligence contributing to the result.

We are persuaded that the tendency of the charge,and of all the rulings,following it,was to minimize unduly,in the minds of the triers of the facts,the gravity of the decedent’s fault.Errors may not be ignored as unsubstantial,when they tend to such an outcome.A statute designed for the protection of human life is not to be brushed aside as a form of words,its commands reduced to the level of cautions,and the duty to obey attenuated into an option to conform.

The order of the Appellate Division should be affirmed,and judgment absolute directed on the stipulation in favor of the defendant,with costs in all courts.