Court Opinion

ID: 9615823
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 04:41:07.581772+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:19:50.986978
License: Public Domain

QiVEN, Judge,
dissenting:
I am of the view that the death of the decedent resulted from an unavoidable accident. A short time before the accident, the car in which decedent was riding skidded partly into a ditch,, leaving the rear part of the vehicle projecting into the public highway so as to obstruct a *446part of the paved portion of the highway. In these circumstances he was under a duty to warn approaching traffic of the danger. He did so, and there is no indication or contention that the warning was given in an improper or negligent manner. It was observed by the defendant a distance of at least three hundred feet from the place where decedent was struck and killed. To have failed to warn approaching traffic of the danger would have been negligence, as all seem to agree, so that, in view of the majority opinion, he may be charged with having been contributorily negligent, regardless of his own actions. I can not agree.
The driver of the' Bussey car observed the warning given by decedent and his son a distance of at least three hundred feet from the Hammersmith car, in ample time to have stopped even though the speed at which he was driving was fifty-five or sixty miles per hour, except for circumstances not known to him or which he could not have reasonably expected to exist, in so far as the evidence shows. Thereafter, he used every reasonable effort to stop his car during the time it skidded three hundred feet to the Bussey car. There is not the slightest degree of evidence tending to show that Bussey had failed to do everything reasonably possible to have stopped his car, or to have in any way prevented the accident, after he observed the warnings. In these circumstances, the slightly excessive speed at which Bussey was driving, according to the testimony of decedent’s son, could not possibly have been the proximate cause of the death of plaintiff’s decedent.
Being of these views, I respectfully dissent. I am authorized to say that Judge Fox joins in this dissent.