Court Opinion

ID: 9539715
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 16:09:00.592966+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:59:16.043285
License: Public Domain

HENRIOD, Justice
(dissenting).
I dissent. It is incredible for me to believe that the doctor, native of the area and completely acquainted with the old and new roads, who actually had sold to the State land lying on both sides of and for the purpose of constructing the new road, was a reasonable and prudent person in the peripatetic excursion he made back and forth over and down a known abandoned road. In my opinion his urging of compunction on the part of the contractor in this case should be leveled against himself. The compunction of the jury in its unreasonable verdict, not only as to actionable negligence but as to the wholly uncalled for, unsupported and ttnrealistic verdicts for minor scratches and bruises, should be met by a reversal. It is highly significant that the guest in the doctor’s car never felt justified in suing the contractor, although the doctor did a year and a half later, after what this writer believes was the product of irresponsible carelessness in driving at 45 miles per hour on an abandoned highway, in broad daylight, into what appears almost to have been a yawning chasm. To justify payment for such irresponsibility prevents rendering lip service, even, to our oft-repeated conclusion that one may not recover if he fails to see that which is obvious, or blindly neglects to do so. I believe our affirmance here to be an unwarranted deification of the jury system, which, like humans generally, is not without its imperfections.
The citation in the main opinion at 71 A.L.R., p. 1207, seems inapropos here since-it applies to the “unwary and unsuspecting traveler.” This writer simply cannot believe the doctor to have been either or both.