Court Opinion

ID: 9540015
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 16:12:15.753513+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:59:31.826021
License: Public Domain

Mr. PRESIDING JUSTICE CRAVEN, dissenting: I simply cannot agree with the majority’s conclusion that plaintiff’s due care was an issue of fact. Reliance on Aurora National Bank, I feel, is misplaced. In that case plaintiff, a passenger, was asleep in a pickup truck at the time of the fatal accident. The driver appeared intoxicated. Concededly, plaintiff’s actions in riding with defendant, knowing his state of intoxication, could be viewed as contributory negligence, or contributory willful and wanton misconduct. Here, neither the speed limit, the number of cars on the road, nor the time of the day constitute factors, like the driver’s intoxication in Aurora National Bank, which could reasonably thrust upon plaintiff the duty to remain awake and functioning as a backseat driver. Therefore there was no question of plaintiff’s due care to put before the jury. Conceivably this error could have led to the verdict for the defendants even though the jury believed that one or more of them was negligent. In addition, I am troubled by the jury instruction issue. I do not agree with the majority that this accident could reasonably have been found by the jury to have been “unavoidable.” There was no evidence presented showing that an act of God, a mechanical malfunction, or an emergency caused the accident. All of the evidence points to the conclusion that the negligence of one or more of the defendants was the proximate cause of plaintiff’s injuries. For that reason, and because plaintiff was asleep, unable to reconstruct the events from his own observation, I would permit the jury instruction which the trial court refused. Cf. Ybarra v. Spangard (1944), 25 Cal. 2d 486, 154 P.2d 687.