Court Opinion

ID: 9695483
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 18:20:51.335119+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:13.229736
License: Public Domain

Adams, J.
(concurring). The trial judge correctly entered summary judgment  for the reasons set forth in his opinion :
“Plaintiff further argues that in a motion of this kind obviously the testimony obtained from the deposition must be viewed in a light most favorable to the plaintiff, and that the issues to be resolved on a summary judgment must of necessity be based on undisputed facts. The court agrees with that issue, but has not heard counsel indicate that there are any disputed facts. I don’t quite understand how counsel for the plaintiff can quarrel with his own witness’s sworn testimony, in which he says that he stopped at the curb before crossing, looked, could see for three blocks and observed only the sports car, waited for that, saw nothing else, proceeded to cross the road between the crosswalks, and then about three feet from the farther edge of the *120southbound lane did make an observation and saw the defendant’s car only five feet from him. These are undisputed facts, testified to under oath by the plaintiff and agreed to by the defendant, agreed to because this is the basis of the motion. ■
“This comes to point 3 of the court’s position. There was obviously a clear legal duty on the part of the plaintiff to make an observation of oncoming traffic. He admits by his own testimony that he did not do this. He either failed to make an observation, or he failed to see what was right in front of him to be seen until the defendant’s car was only about five feet from him. This is a clear legal violation of the plaintiff’s duty as outlined by the courts of this State over a number of years. There was no congestion in the area, no unusual circumstances of any kind. It was daylight. As far as the records indicate, only two cars were in the southbound lanes, and so far as the deposition indicates, no other witnesses. These facts therefore remain undisputed. The plaintiff did violate his clear legal duty as prescribed by law. In violating hi,s duty he contributed to the cause of the matter, to the accident which resulted.”
At the time the motion for summary judgment was granted, depositions of plaintiff and defendant, the only witnesses, had been taken. Plaintiff testified as follows:
“Q. In other words, what I want to know, Mr. Green, is whether or not you looked to your left after you started crossing, between the time you started crossing the road up until the time when you looked and saw the car five feet away ?
“A. When I looked, before I left where I was at the curb and the first car passed?
"Q. Yes.
“A. I looked to the left and I didn’t see anything, and I proceeded across the road, but I turned and looked the other way to check the traffic flow on the^ *121other side. When I turned back, I seen this car, but of course he was all over me already. That was the whole thing.
“Q. • All right. In other words, then as I understand your testimony, from the time you started out three feet west of the pavement?
“A. Yes.
“Q. And until the time you first' saw this car about five feet away from you, you at no time looked to your left, is that correct?
’ “A. I didn’t look back to the left, I looked before I left the curb, before I proceeded, started across.
“Q. I understand. What I want to be' sure of is whether or not you made any observations to your left between the time you were three feet west of the pavement until the time you actually did see this car when you were three feet or so into the most easterly southbound lane?
“A. No, not to my recollection.”
. The deposed testimony on cross-examination of Charles Y. Wallace, the defendant, was to the effect that he was traveling at approximately 50 miles an hour in the left lane of the two southbound lanes, that there was a car in front of him in both of those lanes, the. one directly in front of him being about 40 feet ahead, that he does not know where Green came from, that he did not strike him but, rather, that plaintiff was six feet ahead of his car and three feet to his right when he first saw him, that Green ran into his car, that defendant veered to the left when he saw him, and that when he first saw him plaintiff was not in defendant’s lane but was in the curb lane.
Since all of the available testimony was before the court upon depositions as fully as if upon trial, it could be tested in the light most favorable to plaintiff. Whether we accept all of it or only plaintiff’s,., it must be concluded that plaintiff did not exercise the standard of care of a reasonably pru*122dent man under the same or similar circumstances and that his failure to do so was a proximate cause of the accident. Plaintiff’s contributory negligence having thus been established, he is barred from recovery.
Smith, J., concurred with Adams, J.