Court Opinion

ID: 9709106
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 03:40:14.810442+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:22:46.147334
License: Public Domain

i SHEPARD, Justice,
concurring in result.
The evidence which tends to support the jury's verdict in this case is such that I regard it as adequate to meet the standard used in Andert v. Fuchs (1979), 271 Ind. 627, 394 N.E.2d 931. Thus, I do not see the need to announce a new standard and overrule prior precedent in order to affirm the judgment of the trial court.
Whether driver-defendant Robert Williams was intoxicated or not, I think the jury had adequate evidence before it to support its conclusion that his bekavior was wanton and willful. Even if one chooses to accept Williams' argument that the passage of time and lack of personal knowledge explain his inability to recall much of what happened on the night of the collision, I think the jury was entitled to conclude that a driver who makes a wrong turn off a busy street into a private drive and chooses to correct his mistake by recrossing the highway without stopping or looking, at a speed of thirty to thirty-five miles per hour, is a driver whose decision creates "a very real and present likelihood of injury under circumstances where the misconduct of the operator of the vehicle would be the proximate cause of the injury." Clouse v. Peden (1962), 248 Ind. 390, 398-899, 186 N.E.2d 1, 4.
The practice of our appellate courts has been to avoid overruling earlier case law "unless the overruling opinion is so inconsistent with earlier opinion that both cannot stand together." Department of Treasury v. City of Linton (1945), 228 Ind. 863, 372, 60 N.E.2d 948, 952. Inasmuch as I regard today's result as consistent with Andert, I would not take the step of overruling it.
DeBRULER, J., concurs.