Court Opinion

ID: 9526826
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 03:24:44.808688+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:22:28.137926
License: Public Domain

MORAN, J., dissenting: In my opinion, defendant’s intestate was negligent as a matter of law and therefore the trial court erred when it denied appellant’s motion to remove the issue of appellee’s negligence from the jury’s consideration. The undisputed evidence is that the defendant’s intestate came to a sudden stop on Interstate Route 70, backed his car up and stopped, started forward again, stopped, and started backing again when he was hit by the truck driven by Norman Hitt. Such a heedless act on a controlled-access highway, where the permitted speed for vehicular traffic is seventy miles per hour, should be termed foolhardy rather than negligent. The writer of this dissent has made an exhaustive research to determine whether courts in this and other jurisdictions have passed upon this question, but has found little authority directly in point. Backing down a state highway is such an unusual thing to do, so fraught with danger, and so opposed to the dictates of common prudence that it is difficult to find cases alike on the facts — very, very few people are so foolish. However, the courts in one jurisdiction have passed upon this question. In Sodergren v. Goodman, 242 F Supp 44, the trial judge held that backing a truck in violation of a South Carolina Statute, which provided that the driver of a vehicle shall not back it unless such movement can be made with reasonable safety and without interfering with other traffic, constituted negligence per se and quoted with approval, Chesser v. Taylor, 232 SC 46, 100 SE2d 540, and Green v. Sparks, 232 SC 414, 102 SE2d 435. Although the South Carolina Courts hold that a violation of the backing provisions of its Motor Vehicle Act is negligence per se, they do not so hold with regard to all of the provisions of the South Carolina Motor Vehicle Act. At the time of the accident in the present case, chapter 95%, section 189a of the Ill Rev Stats, provided: “(a) The driver of a vehicle shall not back the same unless such movement can be made with safety and without interfering with other traffic.” This statute was amended in 1965 by the addition of paragraph (b) which now provides: “ (b) The driver of a vehicle shall not back the same upon any controlled-access highway.” The Illinois Legislature felt that the problem of backing on controlled-access highways required special treatment. I agree.