Court Opinion

ID: 9845847
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 03:29:28.215347+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:16:23.634922
License: Public Domain

Carlisle, J.,
dissenting.
By the terms of Code § 11-107, it is provided: “The liability of the operator of an aircraft carrying passengers, for injury to or death of such passengers, shall be determined by the rules of law applicable to torts on land arising out of similar relationships.”
It is well established in this State that the duty owed a guest passenger, riding by invitation and gratuitously, in another’s automobile is that of slight care; and the absence of such care is termed gross negligence. Code, § 105-203. Hennon v. Hardin, 78 Ga. App. 81 (50 S. E. 2d, 236), and cases- cited.
While the various acts of negligence alleged in the petition as amended are described as both ordinary negligence and gross negligence, the evidence adduced upon the trial shows without contradiction that the plaintiff’s husband was a guest passenger in the airplane of the defendant; the case was tried upon the theory of the breach by the defendant of his duty to exercise slight care to avoid injury to the plaintiff’s husband; and the court in its charge to the jury confined and restricted the issue to the question of whether the acts of negligence charged constituted gross negligence. Accordingly, this court will confine itself to that issue in determining the question of the sufficiency of the evidence to support the verdict.
Gross negligence and slight diligence are defined in our Code: “In general, slight diligence is that degree of care which every man of common sense, howsoever inattentive he may be, exercises under the same or similar circumstances . . The absence of such care is termed gross negligence.” Code, § 105-203.
Questions of negligence and diligence, even of gross negligence *396and slight diligence, are-questions for the jury, which the court cannot determine as a matter of law except in plain, palpable, and indisputable cases. Capers v. Martin, 54, Ga. App. 555 (188 S. E. 465), and cases cited.
In an action for damages alleged to be the proximate result of several acts of negligence, if the plaintiff is to recover, it must be upon proof that one or more of the alleged acts of negligence was the proximate cause of the injuries sustained.
The negligence specified in the petition to be the proximate cause of the injuries to the plaintiff’s husband is as follows: (1) operating the plane at such a low altitude as to make it unsafe to land the plane at the time and place at which it was landed; (2) the defendant’s operation of the plane while under the influence of intoxicants; (3) the defendant’s allowing the plaintiff’s husband to become a passenger on the plane while he (the plaintiff’s husband) was under the influence of intoxicants; (4) the defendant’s landing or attempting to land on the road in question when he knew or in the exercise of ordinary care should have known that the road was an unsafe place to land the plane; (5) the defendant’s failure to land the plane in a safe place with the use of the care and diligence required by law; and (6) the defendant’s landing or attempting to land the plane at a place and in a manner that disregarded safety for the life of the plaintiff’s husband who was a passenger in the plane. By amendment these acts of negligence were described as gross negligence and the case was tried upon the theory of gross negligence.
After close perusal of the evidence for proof of one or more of the acts of negligence charged in the petition, I nowhere find in the record evidence of any negligence which the jury could reasonably infer came within the statutory definition of gross negligence and which the jury could reasonably infer also was the proximate cause of the injuries sustained by the plaintiff’s husband. True, it is uncontradicted, in fact admitted by the defendant, that he and the plaintiff’s husband, at approximately 2:30 and 3:30 o’clock on the afternoon of the day of the plane crash, both took drinks of whisky of approximately one or two ounces each on the two occasions; and it is .also true that there is evidence that at the time the defendant and the plaintiff’s, hus*397band took off on the fatal flight, between 6:30 and 6:45 o’clock, the plaintiff’s husband was under the influence of the intoxicant and that, abstractly, the defendant was negligent in taking an intoxicated person aboard his plane. There is no evidence or circumstance, however; from which the jury would be authorized to infer that the intoxication of the plaintiff’s husband in any way interfered with the defendant’s operation of his plane or had any causal connection whatsoever with the crashing of the plane. There is no evidence either that the defendant was under the influence of the intoxicant at the time they took off on the flight. According to the only witness present at the take-off, the defendant’s actions were normal in every respect and did not manifest those of a person under the influence of an intoxicant, and we know of no presumption that the consumption of from two ounces minimum to four ounces maximum of whisky will leave all persons under its influence some three hours later. The defendant’s actions and preparations for the flight were in every respect normal. There is no evidence whatsoever that the defendant consumed any more whisky after he took off in the plane. While it is true that the defendant and the plaintiff's husband took whisky with them aboard the plane, the evidence is uncontradicted that the bottle of whisky was placed in the defendant’s traveling bag, the bag was placed in the luggage compartment behind the seat of the plane, and in such location was not accessible to occupants of the plane while the plane was in flight. But, even if we assume that the jury might hypothesize, from the defendant’s “looking like a wild man” and his excitation after the crash of the plane, that he was under the influence of the intoxicant and therefore under its influence just prior to the crash, the hypothesis that the defendant’s agitation was the result of the shock of the plane’s crashing and his knowledge of his friend’s severe injury is equally reasonable. But again, even if we postulate that the defendant was under the influence of the intoxicant just prior to the crash of his plane, there is no evidence that he was under the influence to such an extent that the intoxication in any way affected his ability to pilot the plane or that the intoxication contributed to the wrecking of the plane. To say that it did so is but mere conjecture and surmise.
There is no evidence or circumstance from which the jury *398could infer that the defendant’s operation of the airplane at a low altitude made it unsafe to land the plane at the time and place at which he attempted to land it; rather it bespoke the defendant’s caution to descend to examine the proposed landing site.
Coming next to the questions of the proof that the road on which the defendant attempted to land his plane was an unsafe place at the time and that he was negligent in not attempting to land in a safe place and that these acts of omission and commission constituted gross negligence, we think that the most that can be said on this score, under the facts of this case, is that the defendant was guilty of an error in judgment. While it is true that there was evidence that the defendant’s plane was equipped with lights and radio which would enable a pilot to fly it by night and to make night landings, and there was evidence that the defendant’s gas supply was sufficient for him to have flown to an airport at which night landings could be safely made, I think that to have required the defendant to give up his trip to Fitzgerald and either to return to Fort Valley whence he came or to proceed some hundred miles further to an airport which was safe for night landings would have been requiring the defendant to exercise a great deal more than slight care. It is uncontradicted that the defendant could not find the airport at Fitzgerald; the road was straight for ten miles; the plane was thirty-three feet wide, from wing tip to wing tip; the road was from forty to forty-four feet wide, the fields of the environs were grown up in crops or grass and weeds; while the road was lined on one side with poles carrying telephone and electric wires and the defendant knew that such poles are frequently held in place by guy wires, he examined the situs of his proposed landing but found no such obstructions; and although it was “dusk dark” I think that if the defendant was negligent in attempting to land his plane under these circumstances, it certainly was not such negligence as could be characterized as gross. The crash was caused by the defendant’s failure to discover the guy wire and flying his plane into it, and the burden of proving gross negligence can not be carried by a mere inference or presumption of negligence. See generally in this connection Minkovitz v. Fine, 67 Ga. App. 176 (19 S. E. 2d, 561), and cases there cited.
*399To recapitulate, the defendant was not charged with gross negligence in taking off to Fitzgerald without knowing where the landing field there was; he was not charged with gross negligence in taking off at a time of day such that if he did not find the landing field he would be forced to land elsewhere on the approach of darkness; he was not charged with knowledge of the presence of the wire which caused the wreck of his plane— at most he was charged with the knowledge of the likelihood of its presence, and his uncontradicted evidence was that he examined the roadway for the presence of such wires and did not see the fatal wire—he is not charged with having seen the wire and having been grossly negligent in landing there in spite of its presence; it was not shown that the defendant was intoxicated, or if intoxicated that intoxication contributed to causing the wreck of the plane; it was not shown that the defendant knew that the situs of the proposed landing was dangerous until after the wreck, and while he testified, as pointed out in the majority opinion, that he knew the place at which he attempted to land was unsafe, he qualified this statement by showing that this bit of information came to him by virtue of the wreck—of course he knew it was dangerous after he had wrecked his plane there; it was not shown that his return to Fort Valley to land would have been any safer, for by the time he reached there it would have been completely dark and the landing field there was not lighted at night; it was not shown that it would have been any safer to proceed to Valdosta, where the field was lighted, as the defendant testified that he had never landed the plane at night. In short, it seems to me, that for an error in judgment the jury has been permitted to find the defendant grossly negligent by an application of the doctrine of res ipsa loquitur, which I am sure my colleagues readily agree is not applicable where the cause of the wreck has been shown. I therefore dissent from that part of the decision contained in division 12, and from the judgment of affirmance.