Friddle

This is an appeal by defendant Southern Pacific Company, a corporation, from a judgment entered against it upon a verdict of a jury in the sum of $25,500. The plaintiffs are two minor children and the widow of Glen Friddle, who was killed on the twenty-first day of March, 1929, by reason of a collision between an autotruck, which said Glen Friddle, as the sole occupant, was driving, and a passenger train of the appellant. The case was dismissed as to all defendants save appellant Southern Pacific Company. A motion for a new trial was made and denied.

The facts necessary for a correct understanding of the questions involved on this appeal may be thus briefly stated:

Glen Friddle was a young man of the age of twenty-five years and was engaged in the occupation of truck driver. His place of occupation was at or near the town of Crows Landing in Stanislaus County. The Southern Pacific Company operates its lines through the said town, among which trains is the passenger train generally known as “The Owl”, being one of the company’s fast trains operating between San Francisco and the empire south of Tehachapi. Near Crows Landing is an open country crossing where the main traveled…