Court Opinion

ID: 9701726
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 22:34:29.054244+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:21:28.027888
License: Public Domain

Dissenting Opinion bt
Mr. Justice Musmanno:
The Majority Opinion rules that the affirmance by the lower court of the defendant’s point — “The speed of the automobile was not the proximate cause of the accident” — was error. Standing alone, this ruling would entitle the plaintiff to a new trial. The majority, however, states that the plaintiffs were not entitled to a verdict in any event because they failed' to prove any negligence on the part of the defendant.
The definition of negligence — want of care under the circumstances — has become so hackneyed, shopworn and monotonous through years of battering and endless quotation that its sententious wisdom is sometimes overlooked, as a simple weather vane can be lost *321and ignored when viewed through the maze of complicated charts, instruments and equipment in a meteorological laboratory. Nonetheless, that rudimentary definition of negligence can often be more depended upon accurately to point out the currents and counter-currents of justice in negligence cases than all the involved rules of jurisprudence, citation of authorities and quotations from text books.
Did the defendant Mrs. Jean Heilman exercise care under the circumstances when she allowed her automobile to go into a 200 feet skid, careen over an embankment, crash through a fence, collide with a telegraph pole, and come to the end of its violent journey resting on its side?
Mrs. Heilman knew that the roads were slippery. She skidded at the very beginning of the trip, she passed signs along the road which warned her that the roads were slippery when wet, and she was aware that with rain falling the highway was actually wet.
It has been submitted on behalf of the defendant that the accident was caused by a patch of ice and that there was no way for her to know that ice would appear on the highway. The fact that winter with all its glacial forces had taken over the countryside (it was December 29th) would certainly suggest the possibility that Jack Frost and his sprightly crew might be glazing the roads. In fact, ice had been discovered at a point described as Eden Park Boulevard and Walnut Street (some 3 or 4 miles back from the scene of the accident.) The witness John R. Brennan, called by the defendant, testified to noticing ice on the road “about 100 yards from the upset car.” He also testified that the ambulance which called for the injured plaintiff skidded because of ice on the road.
But even if it were to be stipulated that the defendant was not conscious of ice encrusted to the cartway *322this would not absolve her from liability; the controlling element of negligence in the case was not the presence or non-presence of ice, but the slipperiness of the road. It could well be that it was the water on the ice which converted the defendant’s automobile into a sled, or it could be that the automobile would have skidded even without the presence of ice. The road signs proclaimed that the road would be slippery when wet and there was a plethora of evidence on the general slipperiness of the road. Mrs. Lundin testified: “Q. Did you know what the condition of that road was when it was wet? A. Yes, the road was very slippery.” Miss Kathryn Tremont testified: “Q. What is the condition of it when it is wet? A. Well, it is one of those hard surfaces, black surface roads, it is slippery.” John R. Brennan testified: “Q. That road was wet on the night of this accident? A. Yes. Q. That road is slippery when wet? A. Yes.”
The person who willingly speeds over a known untractionable, slippery road is bound for court or a hospital, or both. The majority opinion contends, however, that the speed of Mrs. Heilman’s car is irrelevant to the case, but how can speed be ruled out? Is 35 miles an hour such a snail’s pace that it can never be provocative of accident? It is a self-evident observation that, in given circumstances, even 10 miles an hour can be evidence of negligence. (For instance, churning and splashing over a flooded road at 10 miles per hour could easily be causative of tortious incident.)
The touchstone which is determinative of the issue in this case is the simple one: Did the defendant exercise care under the circumstances? Every consideration for prudence dictated the utmost caution and the slowest speed possible. The night was soggy with rain and fog, cloaking the highway with visible and invisible menace. The defendant driver ignored the warnings *323which pressed upon her not only through her own senses but through the verbal admonitions of her companions. Mrs. Lundin urged Mrs. Heilman to “take it easy, to take it slow.” The defendant herself was conscious of the slippery conditions. She testified: “Q. Do you know whether that blacktop road was slippery when wet? A. I suppose it was . . . Q. When you reached Walnut Street was there anything that happened concerning your car? A. Well, we felt it sort of slide, but it wasn’t much of a skid. It just could be from the wet road.”*
In spite of the insecure traction underwheel, Mrs. Heilman sped down the steep and tortuous Dewey Hill road and entered into a sharp curve at the intersection with the Buena Vista-Lovedale Hollow Boad driving at 35 miles per hour. Was this proper care under the circumstances. We have held repeatedly that amid circumstances of this kind only the jury can determine whether the defendant used proper care.
In Eisenhower v. Hall’s Motor Transit Co., 351 Pa. 200, this Court said: “Accordingly, what may be a permissible rate of speed at one time and place and under given circumstances may be wholly improper on other occasions and under different ■ circumstances, and in cases where, as here, unusual conditions existed, it has been uniformly held that the question as to whether the speed was excessive was for the fury . . .”
It was obvious from the facts, as they unfolded at the trial, that Mrs. Heilman did not have control of her car. In Knox v. Simmerman, 301 Pa. 1, 6, we said: “The speed is excessive whenever it places the car beyond the control of the driver, and this is especially so when passing an obstruction or rounding a curve.”
*324In Kotlikoff v. Master, 345 Pa. 258, 261, 262, where the facts were somewhat similar to those at bar, this Court in affirming a verdict for the plaintiffs, said: “Other than at this point the highway was free of ice but was wet for miles in both directions .... As an alternative ground for setting aside the verdicts, it is contended that the proximate cause of the accident was not the excessive speed of the Goldstein truck, but the icy condition of the highway, which it is urged constituted an independent intervening agency over which the driver of the truck had no control. We are of the opinion that there is merit in neither of these contentions and that the action of the court below must be sustained.”
In Knoble v. Ritter, 145 Pa. Superior Ct. 149, 154, the legal point proposed was sufficiently analogous to the one at hand to warrant quotation here: “The contention of defendant is that plaintiffs’ injuries and property damage were caused by the intervention of an independent agency over which defendant had no control, to wit, ice on the highway. But we think that the evidence was sufficient for the jury to find that skidding of defendant’s car resulted from her own negligence, and, the jury having so found, that she was liable for the consequences.”
In the light of all the circumstances, was the accident in this case foreseeable? If it was, the defendant cannot avoid liability. Mrs. Lundin is entitled to a determination of that question, but as yet it has not been resolved. By the withdrawal of the question of speed from the jury in the court below, and now by this Court giving life to a dead and buried motion for binding instructions, Mrs. Lundin has in effect been denied her day in court.
I dissent.

 Italics throughout, mine.