Court Opinion

ID: 9626022
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 07:59:31.138558+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:06:19.662453
License: Public Domain

SLOAN, J.
dissenting.
There are several reasons for my dissent in this case. The majority does not answer with clarity plaintiff’s assignments of error directed at the court’s allowance of defendant’s motions to amend and to the instructions given on contributory negligence. Plaintiff failed to except to the instruction given but it was part and parcel of plaintiff’s objection to the amendment and that is not the basis of the majority decision. In instructing, the court did not clarify the issue and limit it to plaintiff’s negligence, if any, in entering the car in the first place. The words of the amendment “in riding in said motor vehicle at said time and place” included, perforce, negligence during the ride. The instruction given included reference to plaintiff’s alleged negligence “* * * immediately prior to and at the time of the accident * * The majority state, “That *39there was no evidence that plaintiff was guilty of negligence in failing to dismount once the ill-fated trip was underway.” The motion to amend should not have been allowed in the language used and the instruction should have limited the issue to conduct before entering the car.
In this case, as in many guest cases, there was absolutely nothing plaintiff could have done, after he entered the car, to have avoided his injury. The majority opinion recognizes this failure of proof but ignores it. In cases like this the jury should not be instructed on contributory negligence at all. The majority should so express itself so that this troublesome issue in the guest cases can be clarified. In other words, in most guest cases the plaintiff is either negligent when he enters the oar or not at all. It is a rare case in which a guest has any real opportunity to extricate himself once he enters the car. We should face this reality.
In respect to the beer drinking there was not sufficient evidence to warrant submitting the issue to the jury. I see no reason why a trial judge should have any more difficulty passing upon the amount consumed and the effect of liquor than he experiences on the question of speed or other similar matters of degree. See, for example, the majority opinion in Roehr v. Bean, 1964, 237 Or 599, 392 P2d 248. The party, either plaintiff or defendant, who desires to charge intoxication should have the burden of proving some evidence of actual intoxication and not be permitted, as in this case, to play “f ootsie” with the issue and merely inject it for the jury’s speculation.
And further, since in Williamson v. McKenna, 1960, 223 Or 366, 354 P2d 56, the court adopted the definition of gross negligence found in Section 500 of Restate*40ment, Torts, we should follow the better authority cited by the majority and adopt Restatement of Torts, Section 482, which reads:
“(1) Except as stated in Subsection (2), a plaintiff’s contributory negligence does not bar recovery for harm caused by the defendant’s reckless disregard for the plaintiff’s safety.
“(2) A plaintiff is barred from recovery for harm caused by the defendant’s reckless disregard for the plaintiff’s safety if, knowing of the defendant’s reckless misconduct and the danger involved to him therein, the plaintiff recklessly exposes himself thereto.”
It is not enough to attempt to read into the guest statute a legislative intent to put every possible impediment in the way of a plaintiff in a guest case. It is just as logical to assume that the legislature, when considering the act, was equally aware of the common law rule expressed in the quoted Section 482 and did not alter that much ¡of the common law relationship of host and guest. It is always difficult to read an intent into legislative silence. But in this instance it would have been most simple to have provided that ordinary negligence on the part of a plaintiff would bar him. In those few guest oases in which an instruction on contributory negligence is appropriate at all, the instruction ¡should be in the language above quoted. The failure of the trial court to so instruct in the instant case has been plaintiff’s principal assignment here. The assignment should have been allowed and the case returned for a new trial.