Court Opinion

ID: 9844678
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 03:06:28.808407+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:15:39.937660
License: Public Domain

ON DENIAL OF REHEARING
BISTLINE, Justice.
Defendants in their petition for rehearing assign as error in the Court’s opinion the failure “to consider, because defendant owes no duty to plaintiff, defendant’s conduct as a matter of law cannot be the proximate cause of the accident.” In a supporting brief defendants argue: “Whether defendant Westover did or did not see plaintiff Robinson prior to the accident has no bearing on the question of proximate cause in the instant matter. Westover owes no duty to Robinson.” Defendants in their first brief filed herein, after pointing out that “it is undisputed and admitted by defendants that their vehicle did not leave any skid marks on the surface of the road,” then urged • upon us “that there is absolutely no evidence in the record of any negligence on the part of Gary Lee Westover.” The court below, however, did not agree with that contention, but rather attempted to compare the negligence of the boy against that of the defendant, West-over. I, too, am unable to agree with that contention, and where the defendants continue to insist that Westover as a matter of law is chargeable with no causative negligence, I will briefly state my own views on this record.
The record is clear that Jerry did not precipitately follow Rick across the highway, but rather that Jerry perhaps in an exercise of caution refrained from crossing until and after passage of traffic other than the Westover vehicle. The boy and his motorbike were at this time on the highway, but behind the white fog line. It is beyond dispute that the boy and his bike were *771clearly visible to Westover, and the West-over vehicle was clearly visible to the boy. The boy is unable to recall what happened. Westover does. He admits to not seeing the boy and the bike until he saw the boy move “into the path of his automobile when he was so close thereto as to avoid any collision with him.” (From Westover brief.) Westover testified that he “had never seen him stopped at the side of the road.... I saw him an instance before I hit him, as he was pulling out to the road.”
Yet, the fact of the matter is that the boy and his bike were there to be seen. Also to be seen, and actually seen by Westover, on the opposite side of the highway, was the other boy on his bike.
Just recently Justice Shepard, in Gavica v. Hanson, 101 Idaho 58, 608 P.2d 681 (1980), reaffirmed Munson v. State Department of Highways, 96 Idaho 529, 531 P.2d 1174 (1975), in its holding “that the driver of an automobile is held to have notice of that which is plainly visible on the highway before him.” Of Munson, in distinguishing that case from the facts and circumstances attendant to Gavica, the Court’s opinion stated that “Munson involved a clear danger, highly visible on the road before it was encountered.” Cases are legion that it is negligence per se for a driver to fail to see that which is plainly there to be seen, Drury v. Palmer, cited in the Court’s opinion being clear and to the point. In Gayhart v. Schwabe, 80 Idaho 354, 330 P.2d 327 (1958), the Court seemingly approves of that portion of an instruction set forth in n.1, p. 362, 330 P.2d 327, telling the jury that: “If you find from the evidence that before the collision Mrs. Schwabe saw or as a reasonably prudent person should have seen Kenneth Gayhart nearing and crossing Hawthorne Avenue, and if you further find that Mrs. Schwabe after seeing young Gayhart or after she should have seen him in the exercise of ordinary care, should have slowed down, turned aside, or stopped, and thereby have avoided the crash, and that Kenneth was injured by reason of Mrs. Schwabe’s failure to do so, then you are instructed that you would be entitled to return a verdict for the plaintiffs, the Gayharts, unless . . . .”
The legislature has recognized that children are entitled to special considerations of care: “. . . every driver of a vehicle shall exercise due care to avoid colliding with any pedestrian upon any roadway and shall give warning by sounding the horn when necessary and shall exercise proper precaution upon observing any child or confused or incapacitated person upon a roadway.” I.C. § 49-735, amended thereafter as I.C. § 49-724 to be effective July 1, 1977. A jury could find under the facts presented so far that Jerry Robinson, aged 7 years, was a confused person as well as the child which he obviously was. I.C. § 49-701, which became I.C. § 49-681, specifically requires reduced speed “when special hazards exist with respect to pedestrians or other traffic.” A jury of reasonable men and women could find that Jerry Robinson was a special hazard then and there existing the not seeing of which was negligence on the part of Westover, and that had Westover seen that which was there to be seen he would have appropriately reduced his speed, as well as sounded his horn, and prepared himself for any required evasive action.
The law has long recognized that children are hazards on or near a highway. A prudent motorist, on observing one deer on or near a highway, or a cow or horse, for that matter, ought also to anticipate the presence of other such animals, and act accordingly. Surely within the bounds of reasonableness a motorist who sees one child and a motorbike on one side of a highway, ought to recognize that as a sign of warning producing some degree of increased vigilance as to what is directly before him on the other side. It takes little effort to remove a foot from a gas pedal; it costs little in time.
McFADDEN, J., concurs.