Court Opinion

ID: 9847633
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 04:03:43.38634+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:17:24.137319
License: Public Domain

DOOLING, J.
I dissent. The opinion in this case applies horse-and-buggy law to the airplane age.
The amended complaint must be liberally construed. (Code Civ. Proc., § 452; Mix v. Yoakum, 200 Cal. 681, 687 [254 P. 557]; Speegle v. Board of Fire Underwriters, 29 Cal.2d 34, 42 [172 P.2d 867]; Hudson v. Craft, 33 Cal.2d 654, 661 [204 P.2d 1, 7 A.L.R.2d 696].) The opinion of my associates not only disregards this rule but in some instances actually misconstrues the plain language of the pleading. The amended complaint alleges that the power lines were “on the east border of the San Francisco Bay Airport and on the landing approach thereto.” (Emphasis mine.) The entire meaning of this allegation is changed by the expedient of omitting a few words and changing the second preposition from “on” to “off,” so that it is made to read that the power lines were on the east border of the landing approach. Having done this by another easy transposition they are speculated into a position half a mile away. The preposition “on” denotes “contiguity” or "contact. ” (Webster’s New International Dictionary, 2d ed.) A town half a mile from a river cannot be said to be located on the river.
The complaint alleges the failure to paint the towers in alternate bands of white and orange and to provide for lighting them from the hours of sunset to sunrise as required by the rules of the United States Civil Aeronautics Administration and that in their unmarked condition they constituted *119a danger and hazard to aircraft using said airport, “which fact was well known to defendant. ’ ’
The complaint further alleges that the casualty to the airplane occurred “at or about the hour of 6:55 p. m. . . . and after the hour of sunset.” (Emphasis mine.) In the face of the specific allegation that the casualty happened " after the hour of sunset,” the majority seizes on the allegation of the time to write out the allegation of the fact that the sun had set. The allegation that it was “after the hour of sunset” is specific and must be construed as true against the indefinite “at or about” allegation of the time. The complaint alleges that plaintiff pilot “failed to see said towers and power lines” and by reason of the failure of the defendant to mark and light them as required by the aforesaid regulation “said airplane was caused to collide with said power lines.” In my judgment the allegations of the complaint are sufficient to state a cause of action.
I differ with my associates on both grounds of their opinion. It needs no citation of authority at this stage of the development of our constitutional law to support the settled rule that all private property is held subject to reasonable police regulation for the protection of the public. I simply cannot agree that such simple requirements as painting and lighting structures which are so near to an airfield as to constitute a danger, when unmarked and unlighted, to airplanes using the field, constitute an unreasonable regulation. To compare this to a requirement that a man tear down a high building is to disregard the elementary distinction between regulation which is reasonable and that which is unreasonable.
Nor can I follow my associates in their conclusion that the complaint shows as a matter of law that the pilot was guilty of contributory negligence. After sunset, as every driver of an automobile will recognize, many objects have a deceptive appearance. We cannot take judicial notice that from the air the exact height of towers and-wires is at any time clearly perceptible and we may assume, from the federal regulations for their marking and lighting, that it is not. In any event I am satisfied that my associates have usurped the function of triers of the fact without hearing the evidence when they assert that they “must presume that the poles and wires were clearly visible to the pilot.”
In my view the extreme position taken by the court in Strother v. Pacific Gas & Elec. Co., 94 Cal.App.2d 525 [211 P.2d 624] should be reexamined. I would reverse the judgment.