Johnson v. Svoboda

UHLENHOPP, Justice.

This appeal involves actions by a parent and a personal representative for damages arising from the death of a five-year-old child. The parties waived a jury and tried the actions to the trial court, which found for defendant Richard Lee Svoboda.

Svoboda drove a school bus east on a flat, straight, two-lane blacktop road in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He stopped at Turner’s Lane. Four schoolchildren on the bus lived south of the road on that lane and two children lived north of the road on a shorter lane. The door on the bus was on the right side at the front.

The four Turner’s Lane…