Court Opinion

ID: 9707852
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 02:23:18.531414+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:22:38.904422
License: Public Domain

Hastings, C.J.,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent. It would seem almost impossible to find a more egregious act evidencing a disregard for one’s own safety than to voluntarily lie down in or alongside the traveled portion of a highway at night. One need not go beyond the cases cited by the majority to support that conclusion.
In Williamson v. McNeill, 8 N.C. App. 625, 628, 175 S.E.2d 294, 296 (1970), a case involving injuries and death to a young man who was lying on the pavement and was struck by a motorist, that court said:
A reasonable inference is valid on nonsuit but speculations are not; the only reasonable inference which we may draw in the absence of evidence more compelling than that which is before us now is that intestate, for whatever reason, voluntarily placed himself on the highway. In so doing, he failed to exercise for his own safety the care of an ordinarily prudent person and his negligence was a proximate cause of his unnecessary death.
Similarly, in Sherman v. Lawless, 298 F.2d 899, 904 (8th Cir. 1962), the court stated:
Here the evidence conclusively establishes that decedent, as defendant approached, was lying on the traveled path of traffic on a primary highway, on a dark night, in dark clothing. Decedent’s action in assuming *128such a hazardous position, if done voluntarily, would manifest a very high disregard for his own safety, and such conduct, in the absence of any reasonable explanation or excuse therefor, would in our view establish contributory negligence more than slight as a matter of law.
Weisenmiller v. Nestor, 153 Neb. 153, 43 N.W.2d 568 (1950), also cited in the majority opinion, is distinguishable. In Weisenmiller, the victim apparently had been in an earlier accident, was injured, and found himself in a ditch with an injured foot or leg. He could not walk, and crawled out of the ditch and blacked out. There was no evidence as to how he came to be on the driving portion of the highway.
I would have sustained Russell’s motion for a directed verdict.
Caporale, J., and Boslaugh, I., Retired, join in this dissent.