Case ID: ga-app_20/html/0603-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "\n      Luke, J.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

8334.
    Hilley v. Hale.
    Decided July 25, 1917.
    Certiorari; from Gordon superior court—Judge Fite. December 'll, 1916.
    In this case the plaintiff sought .to recover for the killing of his • pig by an automobile. He obtained a verdict and judgment in a justice’s court, and the defendant sued out certiorari, and finally brought the case to this court on exceptions to the overruling of the certiorari. The killing of the pig by the automobile was admitted, and there was evidence as to its value. A witness for the plaintiff testified: that he, in company with the defendant, was riding in the public road past the plaintiff’s house in an automobile, which the defendant was driving at the rate of eighteen to twenty-five miles an hour-; that the car was new, the brakes were in good condition, and, so far as he knew, the car was “in first-class shape;” that the defendant was a careful driver and “was driving the ear with all due diligence;” that a small object darted out of a dense growth of weeds and attempted to cross the road in front of the car, and “before the defendant could possibly stop the car” the said object, which he took to be a pig, was struck bv the front wheel; that the car was within ten feet of the pig before the pig was seen; that the road was good and the defendant was driving at “a very, very moderate rate, but that the pig was so near the car (being only about ten feet), before he darted into the road from the dense bunch of weeds, that it would have been impossible for any one to have stopped the same before striking the pig, without turning the car over' and probably causing the loss of human life;” and that “the defendant did all that a prudent man could have done to stop the car.” He testified further that “Gordon county has stock law.” The defendant testified to the same effect, and that on account of the weeds he could not have seen the pig before it darted out and started across the road. He testified further that it “was some two hundred yards from the plaintiff’s premises and was running at large upon the public highway in contravention of the law.” Another witness testified to the same effect. There was no further testimony as to the occurrence in question.
   Luke, J.

The evidence in this case demanded a verdict in favor of the defendant, and it was error for the judge of the superior court to overrule the certiorari.

Judgment reversed.

Wade, O. J., and George, J., concur.

A. L. Henson, for plaintiff in error. G. A. Coffee, contra.