Court Opinion

ID: 9582379
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 22:26:00.213399+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:37:43.875833
License: Public Domain

Eggleston, J.,
dissenting:
An injury to a small child arouses our sympathy, and when, as here, it is shown that the injury is caused by a negligent driver of an automobile there is a natural inclination to attempt to devise a way of fastening legal liability for the injury upon the driver. But the desired end should not be reached by disregarding well settled principles.
*695It is elementary that in an action of this character, the burden is on the plaintiff to prove both the negligence of the defendant driver and causal connection between that negligence and the injury. While proof of causal connection is for the jury, there must be evidence to sustain a finding of that essential element. The admission by the defendant at the scene that he was driving from five to ten miles in excess of the lawful speed limit of twenty-five miles per hour was proof of negligence. But neither this nor the speculation of a police officer that he may have been driving faster warranted the jury in finding that such speed was a proximate cause of the accident.
Obviously, the gist of the plaintiff’s case is that in the exercise of ordinary care the defendant driver should have seen the child in time to have avoided striking him. Proof that he was driving in excess of the speed limit does not establish this. The burden was on the plaintiff to show that when the child went into the street the defendant’s automobile was a sufficient distance away for the defendant, in the exercise of ordinary care, to have avoided striking him. To my mind the proof on behalf of the plaintiff falls far short of this. We are not told where the child came from, when he went into the street, or how far the car was away when he did so. Assuming that the child was thrown ahead of the car by the force of the impact, that does not establish the fact that before the impact the child was a sufficient distance ahead for the driver of the car to have avoided striking him had the car been driven at the permitted speed of twenty-five miles per hour. From all the record shows, it is just as likely that the child came into the street so close to the front of the car that the defendant, in the exercise of ordinary care, could not have avoided striking him.
I would reverse the judgments, set aside the verdicts and remand the cases for a new trial and a new inquiry into the critical issue.
Chief Justice Hudgins and Justice Whittle concur in this dissent.