Court Opinion

ID: 9584587
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 22:50:25.994858+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:08:57.576782
License: Public Domain

Candler, Justice,
dissenting. The family car doctrine as established by the courts of this State applies to a husband or father only when some immediate member of his family is using an automobile owned and kept by him for pleasure and convenience of his family, and is not applicable when his wife, as in this case, is using her husband’s car for and in the prosecution of her own private business. The evidence in this case, as I view it, demanded a finding that the collision which injured the plaintiff resulted from neither an act of negligence committed by the defendant’s wife nor from any failure on her part to use ordinary care and diligence to avoid the collision. It shows that she was driving her husband’s automobile to the place of her employment; that she was wholly within her lane of the highway, traveling at from 45 to 50 miles per hour; that another person, while driving his automobile at an excessive rate of speed around a long curve on his wrong side of the highway, sideswiped an automobile about 250 feet in front of her and then collided head-on with the automobile she was driving to work and while she was still wholly within her own proper lane; and that the plaintiff, while riding with her on a share-the-expense arrangement, was injured as a consequence of the collision. Common justice and the right of a person to properly use our highways require this court to place its stamp of disapproval on the verdict rendered in this case. I am authorized to state that Chief Justice Duckworth concurs in this dissent.