Court Opinion

ID: 9712920
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 05:03:03.132731+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:15.302672
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE GEIGER, dissenting: I respectfully dissent. In this case, the plaintiff’s decedent was killed in an automobile accident that occurred under wet driving conditions late in January; dense fog and complete darkness further complicated the circumstances. Under these extreme driving conditions, the decedent’s plaintiff’s car crossed over the opposite lane of a 55-mile-per-hour highway and overturned. Based on those facts I, unlike the majority, find this case to be analogous to Long v. Soderquist (1984), 126 Ill. App. 3d 1059, 1064. In Long, we affirmed summary judgment for the defendants, finding that it was undisputed that the plaintiffs’ vehicle had slipped on an icy bridge at the crest of a hill and was therefore out of control when it collided with the defendants’ standing automobiles. (126 Ill. App. 3d at 1064.) Thus, we found that regardless of their precise placement, the defendants’ vehicles could not have been a proximate cause of the collision. Given the harsh driving conditions here, plus the fact that the decedent driver’s automobile crossed over a lane of traffic and a five- to seven-foot-wide shoulder before it came to the township’s steep ditch, I cannot agree with the majority’s observation that a reasonable fact finder in this case could infer that the plaintiff’s decedent was in control of his automobile’s movement when he drove onto the opposite shoulder of the road. Rather, I would find that the record shows as a matter of law that the decedent’s automobile was out of control before it reached the ditch. The ditch here, like the defendants’ automobiles in Long, was a mere condition connected with the accident, not a proximate cause. Accordingly, I would affirm the trial court’s dismissal with prejudice.