Court Opinion

ID: 9546802
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 17:35:23.041745+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:16:51.576619
License: Public Domain

*111BISTLINE, Justice,
specially concurring.
Because I am unable to see any flaws in the Court’s opinion which Justice Johnson has authored, I have concurred. The Industrial Commission undoubtedly had a very difficult task before it. In the end it was brought to the conclusion that the three young men were taking a pleasure ride rather than taking the boat out on the reservoir to test it. My own view, having at one time been of that age, is that they very well may have been, and probably were, doing both. It is a known fact, to me at least, that boats and young men go together, or, in other words, young men find pleasure in any boating activity. It would be strange if the three young men did not anticipate running the boat around the reservoir after finishing their work on it. Under the circumstances presented here, which clearly show Don Parris as a generous and benevolent employer who was kind to his youthful employees, I see little substance in the fact that there was not a work order prepared by Parris, especially where he as a business entity had not been engaged to do anything for the boat’s owners. Young Clinger apparently was not involved in purloining the boat or even taking it within the purview of the joy-riding statute.
This appeal presents circumstances where with a paucity of evidence, the trier of fact could have held either way. I would not want to have been that trier of fact, and accordingly it would be presumptuous to do other than affirm.