Court Opinion

ID: 9688464
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 17:48:32.463252+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:18:39.121758
License: Public Domain

Wenke, J.,
dissenting.
I dissent from the majority opinion for in my judgment it determines certain issues that should be submitted to a jury.
I am fully in accord with the majority view that the truck driver’s failure to look, at the time and under the circumstances as in the opinion set forth, constitutes negligence on his part as a matter of law, but I' am unwilling to agree that such negligence was necessarily the proximate cause of the accident that followed.
The driver of the truck testified, as set out in the majority opinion, that: “When he was 300 feet from the private drive he rolled his left window down and then gave a left-hand signal of his intention to turn across the highway to the left, and continued to give such signal until he was 20 feet from the entrance to the private drive.” While there is evidence, as set out in the majority opinion, that discredits this testimony and also evidence, as therein set forth, that indicates it possibly would have been difficult for the driver of the car to have seen the signal, however, whether it was actually given and, if it was, whether it could and should have been seen by the driver of the car when he turned left to pass the truck, which he testifies was at a point some 100 yards back of it, are factual questions - for a jury to decide.
If a jury should come to the conclusion, which under, this evidence I think it would have a right to do, that the signal was given and that the driver of the car could and should have seen it if he had looked, then, in my opinion, a jury could properly come to the conclusion that it was the car driver’s failure to look and see the warning signal or, if he looked, his failure to see it that was the proximate cause of the accident rather than the truck driver’s failure to look.