Court Opinion

ID: 9850531
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 04:58:50.050541+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:20:38.756210
License: Public Domain

Eberharbt, Judge,
dissenting as to Division 2. The evidence in this record demands a finding that Dorothy Gibbons voluntarily abandoned her husband and that the abandonment continued at the time of the accident from which he died.
She testified that “In September of 1950 I moved to McKeesport, Pennsylvania,” and that “The day before I left [Thomas Gibbons, my husband] asked me not to go and I left anyway. . . . I left with my aunt and I had to go to his house to get *797Nathaniel. . . He wanted me to stay but I went on.” True enough, she also testified that he visited her twice in McKeesport between the time she went there in 1950 and the time of his death in 1962, and of his having sexual relations with her when he stayed for a week on one occasion. He sought her return to Savannah, promising to provide a home for her,1 even as Hosea importuned his unfaithful Gomer, though she asserts he did not provide the home, neither did she return, agree to return, or even offer to return to Savannah and in fact did not return to Savannah save on a trip in connection with a court proceeding to compel the husband to provide support for the two children whom she acknowledged to be his. Thus, even if the abandonment ended when the husband visited and slept with her in Pennsylvania, she abandoned him again when she ignored his invitation to return to live with him, and this continued until after his accidental death. “Any refusal on her part to go back to him would have been an abandonment [by her].” Sims v. American Mut. Liab. Ins. Co., 59 Ga. App. 170, 171 (200 SE 164). And there can be no gainsaying that under the circumstances here the abandonment was wilful. It was her own act, in the face of the husband’s importunities that she do otherwise. Her assertion that he did not fulfill the promises to *798provide a home for her, though with his parents or with her parents, until she first abandoned him to live with Abraham Brown, a man whom she asserted to be the father of one of the children and for whom she named the child, does not justify her abandonment. Her only complaint about the home provided was that there had been “in-law trouble.” The husband, as head of the house, has both the duty and the right to provide the home where his family shall live. He may not always be able to provide the kind of home most satisfying to the wife. But there is nothing in the evidence to indicate that what he did provide was inadequate—merely that it may not have been as pleasant as she would have liked because of “in-law trouble.” No attacks appear to have been made against her, either physically or morally. There was no complaint of lack of food or raiment. Moreover, the law does not require of any person the doing of a vain or useless thing. Irvin v. Locke, 200 Ga. 675, 679 (38 SE2d 289); Johnson v. State, 215 Ga. 839 (5) (114 SE2d 35); McDaniel v. Employers Mut. Liab. Ins. Co., 104 Ga. App. 340, 341 (121 SE2d 801). It would certainly have been vain and useless for the husband to purchase or rent a home in Savannah in the hope of her return when she had already declined to do so.
She freely testified about her adulterous conduct with a number of other men beginning before her departure from Savannah and continuing after moving to McKeesport. I can conceive of no more flagrant an abandonment on her part. See American Mut. Liab. Ins. Co. v. Armstrong, 65 Ga. App. 497 (15 SE2d 822).
We reach an immoral result. I cannot believe that it was ever intended by the General Assembly that compensation should be provided to the hedonistic cuckoldry of an abandoning, adulterous wife who engaged in a pejorative promiscuity, publicly practiced, or to its fruits. Sodom and Gomorrah! But even if our public policy wraps a protective shield about the fruits, it goes no further. I must dissent insofar as the result is to award any compensation to this undeserving dam who, having abandoned her husband, boasts of producing five children sired by five strangers to the conjugal bed—naming them! I sincerely *799hope that the honorable area of workmen’s compensation shall not become infected with the national scandal attending our public assistance rolls.
I am authorized to state that Chief Judge Felton concurs in this dissent.

She testified that the deceased had twice visited her in Pennsylvania, once staying a week, and that he had sexual relations with her on each occasion. In connection with these visits she testified: “Q. Did he ever make any promises to you then about providing a home for you? A. Yes, he did. Q. Did he ever fulfill those promises? A. No, he didn’t.” It is to be borne in mind that she was a party to the proceeding and that her testimony must be construed against her. Steele v. Central of Ga. R. Co., 123 Ga. 237 (1) (51 SE 438). She is not entitled to prevail if that version of her testimony the most unfavorable to her shows that the verdict or finding should be against her. Davis v. Abridge, 199 Ga. 867 (2) (36 SE2d 102). Giving this portion of her testimony the construction thus required, it is at once apparent that the deceased was seeking her return to Savannah; there is no other logical reason for his making the promises. And we must construe it as having occurred at the end of his last visit.