Court Opinion

ID: 9646827
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 13:12:37.618119+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:11:42.479854
License: Public Domain

Dissenting Opinion by
Judge Craig:
This court should not undertake the resolution of factual issues, relating to the governmental immunity law, which are exclusively within a jury’s province.
In this case, the administratrix’s affidavit, submitted as to the summary judgment motion, avers that the city was negligent in its maintenance of the nearest underpass and overpass subject to the city’s jurisdiction, relating to 1-95, so that those alternative routes were dangerous and repellent. Here, the question of whether the condition of the alternative city routes was dangerous and such as to create a “reasonably foreseeable risk of the kind of injury which was incurred” is a matter for a factfinder rather than one which can be decided as a matter of law by the court on a motion for summary judgment. Because the condition of the city’s underpass or overpass could have created a reasonably foreseeable risk that travelers would travel across the Commonwealth’s highway on foot rather than using either of the city’s routes, the situation in this case gives rise to a question of fact as to whether the streets exception to immunity is applicable.
When this court, without a trial, decides that the “decedent had a choice' of two means of safely traversing 1-95,” the court is acting as a jury without entitlement to do so.