Court Opinion

ID: 6658582
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-07-20 20:59:51.978907+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T16:00:04.148855
License: Public Domain

Fawcett, J.,
dissenting.
The rule announced in the opinion is supported by the authorities cited. Nevertheless it is barbarous. To illustrate: The statute gives a right of action to anyone who, without fault on his part, is injured by reason of the negligence of a city in not using reasonable care to keep its sidewalks in reasonably safe condition for travel over them. At the same hour A is injured by a sidewalk on Fifth street and B on Tenth street. A has a finger broken. He notifies the city within 20 days, and recovers $100. B has both arms broken, and also suffers a fracture of the skull which renders him unconscious, and he so remains for more than 30 days. He is disabled for life, but he is not permitted to recover. Why not? Because as a result of the city’s negligence he was so seriously injured that for more than 20 days he was totally uncon-. scious and could not notify the city of its own wrong. Any rule of construction which will result in such flagrant injustice is so contrary to every instinct of humanity that it ought never to be permitted to disgrace the reports of the court of last resort of any Christian state. It is preposterous to say that the legislature ever intended to give a party a remedy for a wrong and at the same time deprive him of that remedy if he failed to perform some condition subsequent which the wrong of the *417wrong-doer rendered it impossible for him to perform. “The law countenances no such wretched ethics. Its command always is to do justice.”