Court Opinion

ID: 9459474
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 21:21:21.765247+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:36:10.533244
License: Public Domain

GERALD McLAUGHLIN, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
The majority opinion asserts that upon the record of this appeal the trial judge committed legal error by refusing to conclude as a matter of law that the plaintiff-appellant was not eontributori-Iy negligent.
The court opinion puts the best possible face on its theory, but in view of the facts of the accident to the plaintiff it has taken on an impossible task in its self imposed proposition that appellant was completely free from contributory negligence. The court below did not claim that plaintiff was guilty of contributory negligence. It merely held that from the facts presented it was a jury question as to whether appellant was or was not guilty of contributory negligence. Admittedly, as stated in the court opinion that there was “the issue of contributory negligence”. The appeal record shows it to have been a very live issue which the district court rightly held was an important factual problem to be decided by the trial jury. The necessarily thin viewpoint that the question was one of law for the court is impossible to accept under the facts before us. I would affirm the judgment of the trial court.