Court Opinion

ID: 9718322
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 07:21:05.575296+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:58.462097
License: Public Domain

Dissenting Opinion by
Mr. Justice-O’Brien:
.1 do not agree with the conclusion reached by the majority. I believe that Peoples is liable to the plaintiff and that the task of determining the amount of such liability is readily soluble.
*516While I am in total agreement with the view of the concurring opinion that the physical injuries suffered by the plaintiff did not result from the negligence of Peoples, I am convinced that Peoples’ breach of duty made it impossible for the plaintiff to recover from the unknown party whose negligence actually caused the physical injuries. In my view, this breach of duty imposes liability on Peoples.
I do not contend that Peoples had a duty “to investigate the facts of the accident so as to aid the passenger in possible future litigation”, but I do believe that Peoples had a simple duty to ascertain the identity of the other driver when he was readily available and did, in fact, converse with Peoples’ driver subsequent to the accident. Such a duty on behalf of its passenger is surely not too much to impose upon a common carrier. When Peoples failed to perform this simple duty, it rendered impossible a recovery by the plaintiff against the unknown driver. It is for this reason that I believe Peoples is liable and not because there is a causal connection between Peoples’ negligence and the plaintiff’s physical injuries.
The majority opinion refuses to recognize this duty, labelling it a “moral” duty as opposed to a legal one. It reasons that, despite the trend in the law towards the conversion of moral duties into legal ones where a special relationship, such as common carrier and passenger, exists between the parties, such a trend should only be followed where the interest being protected is the passenger’s physical well-being as opposed to his financial well-being. It argues that the interest in a passenger’s financial well-being is outweighed by an interest in not imposing an affirmative duty to act on the carrier where it was not responsible for placing the passenger in the original position of peril.
Even if I could accept the general thesis that a distinction should be drawn between physical and finan*517cial well-being1 as to whether further affirmative duties should be imposed, that thesis is clearly inapplicable to the instant case. The freedom of the carrier to act is not at stake at all here. For the carrier already has the affirmative duty to perform the acts involved in this case. The Act of April 29, 1959, P. L. 58, §1217, as amended June 2, 1965, P. L. 93, §1, 75 P.S. §1217, requires the operator of any motor vehicle involved in an accident resulting in inter alia, bodily injury, to furnish a report of the accident to the Department of Motor Vehicles, upon forms furnished by the Department. These forms, of course, require the identity of the operators to be supplied. The fact that the penalty for violation of this duty is small does not make it any less a duty. Where the carrier already has the duty, albeit to the Commonwealth, to ascertain the identity of the other driver, it is nonsense to contend that the court is protecting individual freedom by denying plaintiffs recovery for the carrier’s failure to act.
The concurring opinion concludes that it would, in any event, be impossible to determine damages. It opines that we would have no way of determining whether plaintiff would, in any event, have been successful in an action against the unknown driver. It seems to me that that question should not deprive the plaintiff of a cause of action; I see no reason why, in a suit against Peoples, all of the evidence which might have been presented against the unknown driver could not be presented, and why a jury could not determine the liability of the unknown driver and the amount of plaintiff’s damages. The only difference would be that Peoples would be required to pay these damages not because, I repeat, Peoples’ negligence caused the physical injuries, but rather because Peoples’ negligence pre*518vented the plaintiff from maintaining a cause of action against the party who did cause the physical injuries.2
Richette v. Pennsylvania R.R., 410 Pa. 6, 187 A. 2d 910 (1963), offers some help. In that case, Attorney Richette had entered into a one-third contingent fee contract with a client who had a cause of action against the railroad. Subsequently, the railroad interfered with Bichette’s contractual relationship with his client, induced the client to discharge Richette and entered into a direct settlement with the client. Richette sued the railroad and recovered $10,000.00 in compensatory damages, even though the amount of the settlement was only $8,500.00. Richette had testified in his suit against the railroad that he expected a verdict of $30,000.00 had his client’s case against the railroad come to trial. ■The jury apparently accepted that $30,000.00 evaluation and awarded Richette $10,000.00 as compensatory damages.
In that case, we had no problem with determining whether the plaintiff, Bichette’s client, would have won his action against the railroad. Nor can we say that the problem was eliminated by reason of the settlement, a settlement never being an admission of liability. Nor did we have any difficulty in allowing a recovery based upon the amount which Bichette’s client might have recovered in a suit against the railroad.
I see no greater problem in the instant case than in Richette. I would reverse the order of the court below and allow the action to proceed to trial.
Mr. Justice Roberts joins in this dissent.

 The law has striven, through damages for pain and suffering, to equate physical and financial well-being.

 This is the exact procedure which would be followed in the arbitration of an uninsured motorist case, especially in those instances where the hit-and-run provisions of the uninsured motorists’ coverage became applicable.