Court Opinion

ID: 9812431
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 22:39:54.649405+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:24:58.441612
License: Public Domain

Barnhill, J.,
dissenting: The majority conclude that the record discloses sufficient evidence of negligence to require the submission of appropriate issues to a jury. The conclusion is: There is evidence the pilot did not pull out of the spin in time to prevent a crash, and this is evidence of negligence. To this conclusion I must register my dissent.
The essential facts are substantially stated in the majority opinion. The only testimony offered for the purpose of establishing the alleged negligence was the testimony of two expert pilots.
W. S. O’Neal testified that Bobbitt could have made three spins in safety but that in his opinion he — Bobbitt—“just overdid it a little bit too much . . . apparently he tried to make it too good. He just went too low.” He later testified that it is impossible to give an explanation of what happened. “Nobody knows what happened there . . . I couldn’t see anything but the plane ... I did not know what was going on in that plane ... I just assumed what they did.”
R. H. Edwards testified that Bobbitt could have made three spins in safety; that in his opinion the crash was caused by the pilot doing too many spins before he recovered. “When the plane started spinning it continued to spin right on into the ground.” He testified further on cross-examination that all he was saying about it is a surmise or an assumption on his part from seeing the plane start to spin and spinning down and hitting the ground; that he was a mile away.
The substance of this testimony is this: the plane went into a spin maneuver and the pilot failed to peel off and pull out of the spin in time to prevent a crash. Otherwise it is nothing more than conclusion testi*189mony frankly based on surmise and not on fact, if, indeed, the witnesses said or intended to say more than that.
Whether the pilot’s failure to peel off was due to atmospheric conditions or to some failure of the plane or to the voluntary act of the pilot does not appear. The spin was begun before the plane reached the agreed altitude. Perhaps the pilot could not avoid it. In any event he did not peel off and pull out of the spin in time to prevent a crash. It takes no expert or seer to reach this conclusion. The fact is self-evident. But this is not. sufficient. It is common knowledge “that airplanes do fall without fault of the pilot,” and evidence the plane went into a spin and crashed is not- sufficient to repel a motion to nonsuit. Smith v. Whitley, 223 N.C. 534, 27 S.E. 2d 442; Anno. 99 A.L.R. 192; S. v. Vick, 213 N.C. 235, 195 S.E. 779.
Was-the failure to pull out of the spin and the resulting crash proximately caused by the negligence of the defendant? This is the determinative question which this record fails to answer.
True the plane did not peel off in time to prevent a crash, but why? Was it due to error of judgment or carelessness on the part of the pilot ? Did the control stick jam, or the engine stall, or the aileron cable break, or the rudder bar fail to respond, or did the pilot-passenger interfere with the controls? These and like questions are unanswered except by mere conjecture. The expert witnesses surmise but frankly admit they do not know.
It is not sufficient for plaintiff to show that there must have been some negligence, somehow, somewhere. This may be said of almost every automobile collision. He is required to prove more than the possibility or probability of negligence. He must establish want of due care in some particular. In my opinion, therefore, the plaintiff has failed to make out a case sufficient to repel the motion to dismiss as in case of nonsuit.
It is difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish this case from Smith v. Whitley, supra. There, “the plane went into a spin and crashed and I do not know why.” “I don’t know just why the plane crashed; it just came down in a spin with the nose to the ground.” Surely there, as here, the pilot failed to peel off in time to prevent a crash, or else there would have been no crash.
In that case we affirmed the judgment of nonsuit. The court below relied on that decision in granting nonsuit here, but we reverse. If we intend to overrule that decision we should say so, to the end that Bench and Bar may know which case they should follow in the future.
If the fact the plane went into a spin and the pilot, for some unexplained reason, failed to peel off in time to prevent a crash permits an inference of negligence, the judgment should be reversed. Otherwise not. *190It seems to me we settled the question in the Smith case, to which I think we should adhere. I therefore vote to affirm.
Note: The majority opinion now cites and undertakes to distinguish the Smith case — the pilot and passenger were killed here, they survived there. Even so, I have fully expressed my views and am content to rely on the facts as disclosed by the two records.
Winborne, J., concurs in dissent.