Court Opinion

ID: 9660530
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 22:15:13.827578+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:14:20.283322
License: Public Domain

Fairchild, J.
(dissenting). Negligence, in its civil relations, means want of ordinary care. Intent is not an element of legal negligence. See Wharton, Negligence (2d ed.), p. 9, sec. 11; Shearman & Redfield, Negligence (3d ed.), p. 4, sec. 2. Contributory negligence may be a defense, but it does not have a place in an intended assault and battery case. The effect of the decision of the majority will be to bring confusion into our law of negligence. The act styled as negligent was an intentional act, not a thoughtless or negligent act, and may be described in the language used in 4 Am. Jur., Assault and Battery, p. 143, sec. 28, as “discharging a firearm to frighten person.” This section reads:
“In some cases the rule is laid down without qualification that anyone who discharges a firearm to frighten another is guilty of assault. In others it is said that if a person unlawfully discharges a firearm to frighten another but without intending to hit him, he commits assault and battery if the person is hit.”
Whether liability exists should be determined, it seems to me, in an action for assault and battery, where the surrounding circumstances showing the invasion of the defendants’ premises and the disorder caused by the acts of the plaintiff might be properly weighed against the actions of the defendants and where self-defense and sufficient provocation would be properly considered. Zimmerman v. Northern Pacific R. Co. 157 Wis. 514, 147 N. W. 1039. The actual case arising *329out of the circumstances described in the statement of facts has not been fully and properly tried. There is no denial of the provocation caused by plaintiff’s conduct. If by any remote theory the defendants’ acts should be held negligent, so must have been the acts of plaintiff, and why, under such a theory should not a comparison of negligence have been required ?
There should be a reversal and a new trial, first, because an intentional act under circumstances such as exist here is not to be classified as an act resulting from failure to exercise ordinary care; and, second, because the defendants were entitled to have the jury consider the act as intentional and to have them decide whether it was justified by the situation created by the plaintiff.