Court Opinion

ID: 9574759
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 21:07:50.843269+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:43:35.872012
License: Public Domain

Felton, Chief Judge,
dissenting. Code § 105-1803 provides: “As a general rule there can be no tort committed against a person consenting thereto, if that consent is free and not obtained by fraud, and is the action of a sound mind. The consent of a person incapable of consenting, such as a minor, may not affect the rights of any other person having a right of action for the injury?’
In my opinion the rationale of the above Code section and the decisions of our courts on the questions of the guest rule, consent to torts and assumption of risks is that a guest in a motor vehicle consents to any tort committed against him by ordinary negligence or assumes the risks of injury due to ordinary negligence of the driver. If I am right in this view the rule would *643not apply to a minor who is incapable of consenting to be a guest and to torts due to ordinary care. It would therefore follow, under the provisions of the Code section that a mother can recover for a tortious death of her child due to ordinary negligence where the child was incapable of consenting. I think it would be against public policy for a mother, guardian or other person standing in loco parentis to give consent to a tort to a child. Consenting for a child to ride with another is not a consent to a tort.
Townsend, Judge, dissenting. The question of whether an operator of a motor vehicle owes slight or ordinary care to a child guest incapable of contributory negligence (Riggs v. Watson, 77 Ga. App. 62, 47 S. E. 2d 900), and who is incapable of consenting to be a passenger, brings to my mind the question of what reason exists for holding that an operator is liable for gross negligence only. An invitee on the owner’s premises, or anywhere else except in an automobile, is entitled to ordinary care. It appears that the “guest rule” in Georgia grew up as a kind of mistake in the first instance. It has been said it is founded on the common law, but both Alabama and Tennessee, common-law states, follow the ordinary care rule. Neither they nor we have any statute regulating the issue. The first case on the subject was written by Judge Luke in 1921. Epps v. Parrish, 26 Ga. App. 399 (106 S. E. 297). He said that the issue appeared to be an open question in Georgia, and cited Self v. Dunn, 42 Ga. 528 (5 Am. Rep. 544) as authority for the proposition that actionable negligence must be gross. The Self case was an action for loss of personal property by an accommodation ferrier. He was held bound by slight diligence only, the court citing what is now Code § 12-302 relating to the liability of a naked depositary. The first Supreme Court case I find on the subject is Slaton v. Hall, 168 Ga. 710, 718 (148 S. E. 741, 73 A. L. R. 891) which says merely, without citing authority, that “the Alabama rule applies a higher degree of care than does the rule in Georgia.”
I think it inconsistent to require less diligence toward an invitee in an automobile than anywhere else. I would like to restrict the rule as much as possible to make it consistent with *644the duty owed invitees generally. No logical reason has been given so far as I know for requiring only slight care of a guest passenger who is an invitee. If one exists, the most reasonable explanation would be that the invitee by accepting the gratuitous invitation accepts the usual and ordinary hazards of automobile traffic and that those hazards may be said to include ordinary negligence on the part of the driver. If this is the proper rationale, then a child who is incapable of giving consent is incapable of agreeing to assume the risks of the driver’s ordinary negligence. I think that anyone who takes a young child in his care should owe at least a duty of ordinary care to the child, and that this duty would not be waived whether the mother consented to the child being taken in the automobile or not. I take the position that any person entrusted with a young child owes that child as well as its parents ordinary care for its safety, and that this is true whether it is in an automobile or anywhere else.
Fountain v. Tidwell, 92 Ga. App. 199 (4) (88 S. E. 2d 486) is authority for the proposition that it is the duty of the trial court to charge the law applicable to the issues of the case, and that this includes charging that the duty of the defendant to exercise ordinary care in a proper case remains even though the plaintiff’s petition is brought on the theory that the defendant owed her only slight care. There is no estoppel on the part of this plaintiff to so contend unless it be that the mother who gave her consent as the plaintiff here suing for the full value of the life of her child is estopped because she predicated her action on the guest rule and gross negligence in the first instance. I recognize that where a plaintiff brings an action on a theory and tries it on that theory, the trial court is led to charge the law applicable to such theory. Fountain v. Tidwell, 92 Ga. App. 199, supra, was an action on behalf of the mother for the full value of the life of her deceased child. However, the petition of the mother here states the facts under which the child was riding with the defendant as was done by amendment in the Fountain case. There the charge of gross negligence remained unchanged after amendment.
Accordingly, I feel that although the trial court was led into *645error, the error nevertheless exists because it is my position that any rule requiring less than ordinary care toward a six-year-old child taken into custody, care and control by another from that of a parent is inhumane. That such child is taken into an automobile does not change my views. I think such a person owes ordinary care to the child from the time he takes it from the parent until he returns it regardless of the place or method employed.