Court Opinion

ID: 9850302
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 04:54:52.616855+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:20:34.821582
License: Public Domain

Bartu, District Judge,
concurring.
I concur with the result reached by the majority, but disagree with the comparative negligence principle enunciated.
For many years, in numerous railroad crossing comparative negligence cases cited by the majority opinion, and in other cases, which need no citation here, this court has upheld trial courts’ directed verdicts and findings of contributory negligence in a degree greater than slight when compared with that of the adverse party, as a matter of law. These holdings have, in effect, granted jurisdiction to the trial courts to make that determination when, in fact, it has been expressly placed with the jury by the Legislature.
Section 25-1151, R. R. S. 1943, under which this *514matter was tried, provided: “In all actions brought to recover damages for injuries to a person or to his property caused by the negligence of another, the fact that the plaintiff may have been guilty of contributory negligence shall not bar a recovery when the contributory negligence of the plaintiff was slight and the negligence of the defendant was gross in comparison, but the contributory negligence of the plaintiff shall be considered by the jury in the mitigation of damages in proportion to the amount of contributory negligence attributable to the plaintiff; and all questions of negligence and contributory negligence shall be for the jury.”
The statute does not say “some questions of negligence and contributory negligence shall be for the jury,” or “all questions of negligence and contributory negligence shall be for the jury, except in those cases where the court determines, as a matter of law, that contributory negligence is greater than slight when compared with that of the adverse party.” It says, “all questions of negligence and contributory negligence shall be for the jury.” “All” is defined as “the whole of; the whole number, quantity, or amount; every.” Webster’s New International Dictionary, Second Ed., Unabridged.
Obviously, in this case, the trial court found, and correctly so, that all parties were guilty of negligence in some degree in order to submit defendant’s claim to the jury on a comparative negligence theory. It follows, inescapably, under the statute, that the plaintiffs’ claim should also have been submitted. “All questions of negligence and contributory negligence shall be for the jury.”- The trial court was without jurisdiction to make the comparison negligence finding on plaintiff’s claim against the defendant. No amount of interpretation or construction can change the plain meaning of the statute.
Reversal in this matter is avoided, however, not *515because the trial court had jurisdiction to direct a verdict against the plaintiffs by finding, as a matter of law, that they were negligent in a degree greater than slight when compared with that of the defendant, but because the plaintiffs’ negligence was, in effect, compared with that of the defendant upon the submission of defendant’s claim to the jury on a comparative negligence theory.
Nevertheless, I feel compelled to disagree with the majority’s enunciation and perpetuation of a principle that is contrary to law and, as such, results in a denial of substantive due process to litigants in a comparative negligence situation.
I, therefore, concur in the result only.