Court Opinion

ID: 9581700
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 22:17:39.623318+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:37:11.835029
License: Public Domain

Fairchild, C. J.
(dissenting). The defendant was an inexperienced driver. The state authorities did not permit her to drive except when accompanied by a duly licensed driver. Sec. 85.08 (7), Stats. The majority, in their opinion, considered this case an ordinary host-guest case. However, there are facts here which contract the limits of the limited liability ordinarily present in the usual host-guest case. The plaintiff herself is primarily responsible for the vehicle’s being on a busy three-lane highway with an inexperienced and incompetent driver at the wheel. The driver was inexperienced. She had not touched an automobile to drive it for twenty-five years. She had had but a brief experience at that time, and that experience did not qualify her as a licensed driver. The state authorities recognized that fact. She took lessons, and two days before the accident she was granted a sixty-day permit which allowed her to drive only if accompanied with a duly licensed driver. Her sister-in-law, the plaintiff, volunteered to furnish her with the company of a qualified licensed driver. She (the plaintiff) then assumed the responsibility of the operation of that car. The accident happened. The trial court decided that the risk assumed by the plaintiff prevented her from recovering damages because *492of injuries sustained as a result of the inexperience of the driver. It is true that the jury found that the driver failed to exercise such judgment as she possessed. It must be admitted she didn’t exercise any. This failure was a factor to be expected and assumed by the plaintiff because of the driver’s inexperience. It was within the scope of the risk assumed by the plaintiff.
The accident happened with little occasion for the conduct of the driver. A passing truck frightened the defendant. She turned her truck to the right, got onto the shoulder, turned again to the left, and dashed across her lane, the middle lane, and collided with a truck in the third lane coming from the opposite direction. It is without question she lost control of herself and failed to do anything to avoid the collision. The plaintiff knowingly took the chance of an accident arising from a combination of the elements that were lacking in the development of a driver who could stand as a host in the ordinary sense of that relation. I am of the opinion that the judgment entered below should be affirmed.
Our state doctrine, and that of other states, holds that the supervisor of a permittee is not entitled to recover damages from the driver for an accident arising out of and due to the driver’s inexperience. I call attention to the case of Le Fleur v. Vergilia, 280 App. Div. 1035, 117 N. Y. Supp. (2d) 244, 245, and quote the following from the opinion in that case:
“We think that a plaintiff who has been licensed by the state of New York to operate a motor vehicle and who voluntarily accompanies a defendant, who has just received a learner’s permit, in defendant’s car for the purpose of teaching the defendant to drive, assumes the risk of the defendant’s inexperience and may not recover damages for personal injuries caused by the lack of skill or inexperience of the defendant and that it was error for the court to fail so to charge. Cunningham v. Erie R. R. Co., 137 App. Div. 506, 121 N. Y. S. 706; Eisenhut v. Eisenhut, 212 Wis. 467, 248 N. W. 440, 250 N. W. 441, 91 A. L. R. 549; Thomas v. Steppert, *493200 Wis. 388, 228 N. W. 513. While we find no case exactly in point in the appellate courts of this state, we think the principle of law laid down in Murphy v. Steeplechase Amusement Co., 250 N. Y. 479, 166 N. E. 173; Ingersoll v. Onondaga Hockey Club, Inc., 245 App. Div. 137, 281 N. Y. S. 505; Lutzker v. Board of Education of City of N. Y., 262 App. Div. 881, 28 N. Y. S. (2d) 496, affirmed 287 N. Y. 822, 41 N. E. (2d) 97, requires us to hold that assumption of risk is a defense in the present case and should have been submitted to the jury.”
I include also a quotation from Thomas v. Steppert, 200 Wis. 388, 393, 228 N. W. 513:
“Plaintiff knew that the defendant had recently acquired this car, that he was learning to drive it, that but a few days before he did not consider himself sufficiently qualified to ask her to ride with him, and under these circumstances she assumed the dangers incident to his lack of experience.”
I am authorized to state that Mr. Justice Brown joins in this dissent.