Court Opinion

ID: 9549714
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 18:23:48.047968+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:20:48.153378
License: Public Domain

Mallery, J.
(dissenting)—Gross negligence is defined in Webster’s New International dictionary (2d ed.) as follows:
“. . . Negligence is substantially equivalent to culpa (which see) of the Roman and Civil law. It is often divided into three degrees, slight, ordinary, and gross, or crass, negligence, corresponding respectively to (1) absence of such care as would be exercised by an extraordinarily prudent person, (2) by a person of ordinary prudence, and (3) by a person who is wantonly neglectful of the consequences of his acts, or shows little or no regard for their effect upon the rights of others. ...” (Italics mine.)
The majority opinion holds that it was reversible error to instruct the jury in a precise paraphrase of this definition, which accurately defined gross negligence of a host as “an utter disregard . . . for the safety of a guest,
It would be excessively critical for one purporting to *287follow the dictionary to say that utter, as used in the instruction, is prejudicially stronger than wanton, as used in the dictionary, or that disregard, in the instruction, is at variance with no regard, in the dictionary.
However, the majority do not quarrel with the meaning of the dictionary definition, it simply imposes a definition of its own at variance with it. I cannot agree with this practice.
The legislature, whose language is being interpreted, in common with cultured people everywhere, intends its words to have their common and accepted meaning as they are authoritatively defined in standard dictionaries. When some different meaning is intended, legislatures invariably specifically define the terms in question.
In holding that the use of the dictionary definition in an instruction is reversible error, the majority opinion relies upon the legal fiction that the legislature intended its words to mean what the court, rather than what the dictionary, says they do.
The majority opinion, in adopting a definition at variance with universal usage, holds that gross negligence means “. . . the failure ... to use slight care
If there were no degrees in the antonyms care and negligence, it would be possible to define one as being the absence of the other. Failure to use care would be negligence. But, there are degrees of both of these antonyms. Highest degree of care, ordinary care, slight care, slight negligence, ordinary negligence, and gross negligence in that sequence encompass the full gamut of human conduct in a graduated scale of distinct degrees. Conduct excluded from one degree does not necessarily fall in any other single degree. Failure to use slight care, therefore, cannot be equated with gross negligence, because it is as logical for the want of slight care to indicate ordinary negligence as it is to indicate gross negligence. In other words, one who is gulity of ordinary negligence has failed to use slight care, and it is equally true that one who is guilty of gross negligence has also failed to use slight care.
*288The majority holding that the want of slight care (which can be merely ordinary negligence) will support an action of a guest against his host has the effect of repealing the gross negligence requirement of the host-guest statute.
I dissent.
Ott, J., concurs with Mallery, J.