Court Opinion

ID: 9454252
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 18:40:57.433877+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:34:02.389554
License: Public Domain

COFFIN, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
I dissent from only that part of the court’s opinion relating to assumption of risk. I do so, not because the court has not devised an approach consistent with fairness under the circumstances of this case, but because I feel that such an approach is not consistent with such Rhode Island law as has been called to our attention.
To begin with, the res ipsa bridge has been crossed in this case. Perhaps it *902should not have been. But that the jury was allowed, without objection, to resort to this doctrine, seems to me an inadequate reason for attempting to even the scales by refusing to apply Rhode Island’s doctrine of assumption of risk.
Under Rhode Island law it is the court’s obligation not to allow a jury to consider an assumption of risk defense unless the evidence shows that there was a risk, obviously dangerous in nature, which the decedent recognized and voluntarily assumed. Shine v. Wujick, 89 R.I. 22, 150 A.2d 1 (1959); Schiano v. McCarthy Freight System, 75 R.I. 253, 65 A.2d 462 (1949).
The court, in distinguishing Schiano, places emphasis on the fact that the plaintiff there was unaware of any risk. To justify an assumption of risk instruction in this case, however, the record would have to show facts capable of being designated an obviously dangerous risk. What such facts exist? The court has properly, I think, implied that it would not charge consent to “an ignorant passenger * * * simply because he knew the weather was poor. * * * ft
The remaining information available to decedent in this case included his knowledge as a student of flying, and specific knowledge that his pilot was an experienced teacher skilled in instrument flying, that a “missed approach” was a standard technique for coping with excessively low ceilings and had been successfully executed that same day, that the radio had been repaired at Bridgeport, that, shortly prior to the fatal flight, the ceiling at Providence was above mínimums, that Boston had been designated an alternative landing field, and that the aircraft had plenty of gas. The effect of all this, in my view, is to minimize in decedent’s mind whatever risk might be thought by an ignorant passenger to inhere in poor weather conditions.
I therefore see no factual basis on which a jury could properly conclude either that there was an obviously dangerous risk or that decedent could have recognized and assumed such a risk.