The Case of Rose Bird by Cairns Kathleen A.;

Author:Cairns, Kathleen A.; [Cairns, Kathleen A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: BIO022000 Biography & Autobiography / Women
ISBN: 4690667
Publisher: UNP - Bison Books
Published: 2016-08-23T04:00:00+00:00

8

Big Business v. Rose Bird

It was just after midnight in November 1974 when Charles Bigbee left his job as a custodian at Los Angeles City Hall and drove to a pay phone outside a convenience store to call his girlfriend. As the pair spoke, Bigbee looked up to see a car barreling toward him, out of control. Frantically, he tugged at the accordion glass doors, but they had jammed. He covered himself with his coat, braced for impact, and began reciting the Lord’s Prayer. The speeding car slammed into the phone booth, covering Bigbee with shards of glass and partially severing his right leg. Doctors ultimately had to amputate.

Bigbee sued the car’s driver and the Hollywood Turf Club, which had sold drinks to the inebriated motorist. After receiving a small settlement, he decided to file suit against Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Company, which maintained the phone booth, as well as other companies involved in its manufacture and operation. The pay phone had been installed too close to a busy highway to be safe and the company had failed to properly maintain it, his lawyer declared.

The defendants claimed that Bigbee v. Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Company had no merit; how could they predict that a drunken driver might lose control and plow into the booth? A superior court judge agreed with the defendants and issued a summary judgment, terminating the lawsuit. Bigbee decided to take his case to the California Supreme Court. It seemed a long shot, but justices accepted the case. In June 1983, nearly nine years after the accident, the court overturned the summary judgment. Bigbee had every right to sue for negligence, Chief Justice Rose Bird wrote in her 6–1 decision.

“It is not uncommon for speeding and/or intoxicated drivers to lose control of their cars and crash into poles, buildings or whatever else is standing alongside the road they travel, no matter how straight or smooth that road may be.” Defendants had placed the phone booth, “which was difficult to exit, in a parking lot 15 feet from the side of a major thoroughfare and near a driveway. Under these circumstances, this court cannot conclude as a matter of law that it was unforeseeable that the booth might be struck by a car and cause serious injury.”

The lone dissenter was an Alameda County superior court judge sitting on the high court just for the case. “To hold that defendants could be found liable for locating the booth where they did is tantamount to holding that one may be found negligent whenever he conducts everyday activities on or adjacent to the public sidewalk,” wrote Robert H. Kroninger.1 The case never went to trial, however. After the high court decision, the companies involved settled with Bigbee for an undisclosed, though “not insubstantial,” amount of money.2

Few people in California paid much immediate attention to the Bigbee decision, since it did not involve a death row inmate, a victims’ group, or a violent crime. To corporate executives, however, it seemed to be

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.