Court Opinion

ID: 9667744
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 01:54:01.983465+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:15:40.358719
License: Public Domain

Robert W. Hansen, J.
(dissenting). This was a daytime accident at an amber light-marked intersection. Plaintiff had the “right-of-way” and observed defendant’s vehicle stop and then move into her path of travel. The trial court held, as a matter of law, that the plaintiff had no opportunity to do anything to avoid the accident. But it was testified that plaintiff driver said to defendant driver at the time of the collision, “Why didn’t you see me, I blinked my lights three times at you?” The writer would see an issue of fact for the jury to determine whether defendant’s election to blink lights rather than sound the horn as a warning constituted negligence as to management and control — in a daytime intersection accident. (See: Cook v. Wisconsin Telephone Co. (1953), 263 Wis. 56, 62, 56 N. W. 2d 494.) So the writer would reverse and remand for a new trial on the issue of negligence, agreeing that the defendant driver was more negligent, as a matter of law, than the plaintiff driver but not, as a matter of law, 100 percent negligent.
I am authorized to state that Mr. Justice Leo B. Han-ley joins in this dissent.