Court Opinion

ID: 9667674
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 01:51:58.061606+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:15:38.466850
License: Public Domain

BIEGELMEIER, Chief Justice
(dissenting).
The facts here are that plaintiff alighted from a car at approximately 10:30 at night and proceeded to cross the street, not at a crosswalk as required by SDCL 32-27-4, but in the middle of the city block; she saw cars coming from the south and north, and when she had walked to a point just past the center of the street she was struck by a car coming from the north. That was generally how the accident occurred in Nugent v. Quam, 82 S.D. 583, 152 N.W.2d 371, except in that case plaintiff Nugent’s proof was more favorable as it was 5:30 p.m. near a crosswalk on a street in Mitchell; however, plaintiff was a 79-year-old man. There was a jury verdict for plaintiff Nugent.
The majority in Nugent v. Quam, supra, held that the “(trial) court correctly instructed the jury that the plaintiff was guilty of negligence as a matter of law in crossing” the street in that manner, and then held that “[t]he evidence also establishes that plaintiff’s negligence was a contributing cause of the accident” as a matter of law. After some consideration of our comparative negligence statute, this court reversed the judgment for plaintiff and dismissed the action.
The majority opinion here does not mention Nugent or distinguish it on the very point there decided for it states the question in these words:
*679“It is the defendant’s first contention that the plaintiff should be held contributorily negligent as a matter of law in that she was in violation of SDCL 32-27-4 (‘jaywalking’ statute).”
The opinion then agrees with the Nugent rule of law by writing:
“Failure to follow the statute involved constitutes a breach of the legal duty imposed and fixed by such statute. Since negligence is a breach of a legal duty, the violator of a statute is then negligent as a matter of law.”
From the majority statement of the law and the Nugent opinion it was error for the trial court to refuse defendant’s proposed instruction embodying the duty of a pedestrian set forth in SDCL 32-27-4.
Apparently, assuming the standard of negligence fixed by this statute and noncited Nugent, the opinion exempts plaintiff from the standard of conduct required by the foregoing statements in the court’s opinion, and proceeds with a discourse, on the subject of objective and subjective standards as applied to minors. The majority cites opinions of this court which on examination either relate to wanton conduct, a deliberate wrong or conduct of persons of ages which may be termed infants rather than minors.
Perhaps a review of the authorities cited by the majority is in order. The Wittmeier v. Post opinion did not involve an “ordinary negligence action” about which the court cited and quoted from the Restatement (at 78 S.D. 526, 105 N.W.2d 65), for it said:
“However, we are not here concerned with liability for simple negligence.
“Negligence is the failure to exercise ordinary care under the circumstances. Intent is not an essential ele*680ment. Wilful and wanton misconduct on the other hand involves something more. It involves ‘conduct which partakes to some appreciable extent, though not entirely, of the nature of a deliberate and intentional wrong’.” (Emphasis supplied)
It was this “Wilful and wanton misconduct” alleged in Wittmeier that the court was dealing with, and to which the comments are directed (such as normal adult activity and subjective and objective standards, etc.), not simple negligence of which it is claimed plaintiff is charged with here. Our statutes make a minor liable for all wrongful acts, for by SDCL 26-1-4 a minor is held liable “in like manner as any other person” although he may not be liable for exemplary damages unless he was capable of knowing the act was wrongful.
As to the Finch v. Christensen citation, that opinion made no mention of a subjective or objective standard. Finch involved an 11-year-old child; the opinions cited therein of Cameron v. Miller, 43 S.D. 429, 180 N.W. 71, involved a 12-year-old and Doyen v. Lamb, 74 S.D. 126, 49 N.W.2d 382, a child under 6 years. As authority for the statement that this court has in prior decisions held contributory negligence a question for the jury, the majority opinion again cites Finch v. Christensen, supra, involving an 11-year-old, Stone v. Hinsvark, a 5-year-old, and Alendal v. Madsen, a 12%-year-old child. While a 6, 8, 10 or even a 12-year-old child may not be held to the standard of an adult, a high school student nearly 16 years old should be held to know the dangers of crossing a street at an unfavored or prohibited place, and should be charged with negligence as a matter of law as much as was the 79-year-old man in Nugent.
The quotation from the Iowa Supreme Court opinion, Rosenau v. City of Estherville, 1972, Iowa, 199 N.W.2d 125, cited by the majority is not authority for a “rule-of-the-road standard”, here applicable, for the court said of injuries received from a large “fused device” carelessly left in a park after a fireworks display that:
*681“The city relies solely on our decisions holding violation of a rule-of-the-road statute fixing the standard of care, in absence of legal excuse, is negligence per se. We have not extended this rigid rule to other tort cases involving breach of a statute or ordinance.”
While plaintiff here is in a category declared by the legislature to be a minor (SDCL 26-1-1), she was born August 4, 1954, and thus on the date of the accident, April 24, 1970, was within less than four months of her 16th birthday, at which age she would be capable of consenting to marriage (SDCL 25-1-9), and at 18 no longer a minor but an adult able to sell all her property (SDCL 26-1-1) and vote in all elections (Art. VII, § 1, S.D. Constitution, as amended). Such being the present stated age of minors and the recent reduction of the age for persons to exercise all rights of property and responsibility, the court should not raise the age of responsibility for their negligence from 5 and 121/2 years, stated in its earlier opinions, to plaintiff’s age group.
From the foregoing it does not follow that the court should have directed its verdict in favor of defendant. Had the refused instruction been given, as it was in Nugent, it may well be that consistent with my dissent in that appeal, I would have voted with the majority to affirm a verdict for plaintiff. Cf. Bassil v. Fay, 267 Wis. 265, 64 N.W.2d 826. But the jury was not instructed on the jaywalking negligence feature, which would have permitted it to consider and reduce its verdict by reason thereof. Though I disagreed with the result in Nugent, that opinion is binding until the court overrules it; however, the majority opinion does not do so nor make any reference to it. The failure to give the instruction was prejudicial error and requires me to dissent.
I am authorized to state that Justice WOLLMAN joins in this dissent.