Colin

The present controversy arose out of a two-car head-on automobile collision which occurred on Sunday, January 24, 1960, at about 12:30 a.m. The locale of this unfortunate event was Balboa Boulevard near its intersection with Plummer Avenue in the San Fernando Valley in the City of Los Angeles.

Joel I. Colin, the driver of one of the automobiles, and Alice A. McKee, a passenger in the other automobile involved in the collision, brought suit against defendant, an independent sewer contractor, who had been engaged in constructing an interceptor sewer along Balboa Boulevard in the accident area, pursuant to a contract with the City of Los Angeles. Both plaintiffs characterized defendant’s liability in terms of having negligently placed and maintained dangerously deceiving, defective, misleading, and improperly equipped barricades and traffic control devices, so as to cause the automobile driven by Colin to collide head-on with the automobile in which McKee was a passenger.

Due to the identical facts pertaining to the accident and identical issue of defendant’s liability, the two causes were consolidated for pretrial and trial purposes. After a trial by jury, a verdict was returned…