Court Opinion

ID: 9569330
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 20:12:56.329945+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:50:21.608384
License: Public Domain

HENRIOD, Chief Justice
(dissenting).
I dissent. The only evidence of plaintiff’s position on the street was as admitted by the main opinion, testified to by plaintiff herself, to the effect she had traveled “almost across the street” when the accident happened. The plaintiff’s case substantially was based on a presumption of due care for her safety arising out of a doctrine based on traumatic amnesia. If she knew where she was when almost across the street the accident would have to have happened within a half second or less before she reached a point of safety. She said she was walking fast at that point, and there is a presumption that she continued to do so; which presumption certainly destroyed any presumption of due care, and also any theory that she was the victim of “traumatic retrograde amnesia.” The facts simply do not bear out any such theory, since it must be assumed that applying such a doctrine, her blacking out would have to cause her to disremember events only during one-half second before the accident. This is unrealistic under the facts of this case, and the trial court was correct in not permitting the jury to conjecture as to such an unwarranted assumption.
To say the trial court was wrong in this case is to minimize or destroy a studied conclusion of that court, when this court, many times, has said most everything should be left to the sound discretion of the trial court. This court also has deified the jury system, but when such worship extends to a case like this it seems that such sanctity becomes rather superficial.
CALLISTER, J., concurs.