Court Opinion

ID: 8027364
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-09-09 02:45:42.325062+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T16:36:51.823953
License: Public Domain

MR. JUSTICE SHEA,
dissenting:
I would affirm the order granting a new trial.
The statutory violation of defendant driver is clear — the tail end of his tractor-trailer rig was on the wrong side of the road at the time of collision. I would further hold as a matter of law that at least one proximate cause of the accident was the pup-trailer being on the wrong side of the highway at the time of impact. Regardless of plaintiffs initial negligence, he had a right to expect that when he recovered from his own driving error that his own lane of traffic would be clear.
It is not necessary that the driver of the tractor-trailer rig be actively negligent. Here, he may not have been. He *351swerved his rig to avoid the plaintiffs vehicle which was initially in the wrong lane of traffic. However, the effect of swerving the rig was to swing the pup-trailer into plaintiff’s lane of travel. I have no doubt that a contributing proximate cause of the accident was the failure of the defendant driver to have his rig in the proper lane of travel. There being negligence (a statutory violation) and there being negligence which was at least a contributing proximate cause of the accident, the jury could not properly absolve the defendant of all responsibility. Therefore, the trial court was correct in granting a new trial.
The distance between the front bumper of the tractor to the rear bumper of the pup-trailer was 73 feet, 6 inches. The pup-trailer was hooked to the main trailer with a 15-foot tongue that produced a “swivel at the back of the truck.” This combination rig made it an extremely long and dangerous highway vehicle, and the danger was multiplied many times over by the fact that the tractor was pulling 10,000 gallons of gasoline. Plaintiff, an 87-year-old-man, regardless of his own initial negligence in swerving onto the lane of the tractor-trailer, had a right to assume that once he recovered from his own driving error he would not be confronted with the pup-trailer blocking in part his lane of travel.
The extreme length of the tractor-trailer rig made it impossible for the defendant driver to have his rig under control. Although federal and state laws seem to be ever more permissive as to allowable tractor-trailer lengths, the traffic safety laws must also be interpreted to protect the driving public who meet these monsters on the highway. We have failed in that duty here.