Court Opinion

ID: 9706656
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 01:48:47.343788+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:22:24.265402
License: Public Domain

Dissenting Opinion by
Mr. Justice Musmanno:
I dissent in this case. Since the decision is more or less based on a factual situation, I will not enter into a discussion of the merits. However, I would like to say that the Majority Opinion has elevated to an almost unreachable height the doctrine of exclusive control. It comes close to nullifying entirely that excellent principle of law.
The illustrations enumerated in the Majority Opinion are disturbing. For instance, the Majority says that if “ ‘a pole has become dislodged from a standard trolley and with or without an electric flash injures a person,’ ” the application of exclusive control does not apply, even though admittedly the trolley was in the exclusive control of the operating company. To require the injured person in such a case to prove by a preponderance of the evidence that the defendant was negligent in a specific manner would be effectually to deprive him of justice, for it places on him a burden beyond his capacity to meet.
If I am walking on a sidewalk, concerned only with reaching my destination, and an automobile suddenly invades the pedestrian’s lane of travel and strikes me down, why should I have to prove that the driver was negligent? The thing speaks for itself. The motorist could not possibly have been exercising due care and yet allow his car to leave the highway, climb the curb and bowl over pedestrians without even a warning toot. Of course, the driver would have the opportunity to show in any ensuing lawsuit that a factual situation beyond his capacity to cope with, caused the accident, but it is the driver in such a situation who should have the burden of proving nonnegligence, not I who am *510carefully pacing the sidewalk and the treadmill of life, and then, without any possible fault of my own, find myself looking up at the ceiling in a hospital bed, ruminating over the strange ways of motorists, and the courts.