Court Opinion

ID: 9791077
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 02:04:54.709379+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:37:33.845317
License: Public Domain

KRUCKER, Chief Judge
(specially concurring) .
I concur in the results and the judgment should be affirmed. However, I do this on a different basis than my colleagues, Judge Molloy and Judge Hathaway.
The most basic or simple definition of negligence is:
“The failure to do what a reasonable and prudent person would ordinarily have done under the circumstances of the situation, or doing what such a person under the existing circumstances would not have done.”
A reasonable and prudent person has been defined as:
“The conduct we set up as a standard is not the extraordinarily cautious individual nor the exceptional skillful one, but a person of reasonable and ordinary prudence.” Instruction 101B, California Jury Instructions, Civil, 4th Rev. Ed.; Keller v. Markley (1942), 50 Cal.App.2d 155, 122 P.2d 614.
I subscribe to the doctrine of negligence per se when there is a violation of a specific statute, but before a person can be guilty of negligence he must have some knowledge of his failure to do something that the “reasonable and prudent person” would do or not do under the circumstances.
The person charged with negligence must have knowledge and, as stated in the fact situation of this case, defendant had an opportunity to use his brakes immediately prior to the accident and about one-quarter of a mile from the place where the accident took place. I think that he could not be negligent unless he had some knowledge or occasion to know that his brakes-were faulty. Without this knowledge or notice he could not be negligent and, therefore, the judgment should be affirmed.