Court Opinion

ID: 9728305
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 14:04:21.749146+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:25:47.526617
License: Public Domain

WOLLMAN, Chief Justice
(concurring in part and dissenting in part).
I agree that the trial court erred in giving the unavoidable accident instruction. I would also hold, however, that the trial court erred in giving the sudden emergency instruction. The picture painted by defendant’s own testimony precludes him from claiming the benefit of the sudden emergency doctrine. He was abandoning the lake because it was too dangerous for skiing. A reasonable person would have realized that under these conditions it would be inevitable that somewhere on the lake there would be a skier almost totally submerged behind a towing boat, a condition that would call for the exercise of the greatest of caution by the operators of other boats, given the difficulty of seeing such a submerged skier in the waves created by the wakes of passing boats.
I find no fault with the sudden emergency instruction itself, given the fact that it is taken verbatim from South Dakota Pattern Jury Instruction (Civil) 12.03. I see nothing in our decision in Meyer v. Johnson, 254 N.W.2d 107 (S.D. 1977), that finds fault with this instruction. In Meyer, we held that the trial court should have given a legal excuse instruction based upon South Dakota Pattern Jury Instruction 60.00.
I am authorized to state that Justice Henderson, joins in this concurrence in part and dissents in part.