Court Opinion

ID: 9758866
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 23:53:25.79696+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:28:57.041208
License: Public Domain

Grimes, J.,
dissenting in part:
I respectfully dissent from that part of the court’s opinion that relates to the violation of RSA 262-A:21, the yellow-line statute. In my view, this statute has the same purpose as the old “law of the road” which required persons traveling in opposite directions when meeting to turn seasonably to the right of the center. RSA 250:1. This statute was repealed in 1963 and was superseded by RSA ch. 262-A. It was held in L’Esperance v. Sherburne, 85 N.H. 103, 155 A. 203 (1931), that the “law of the road” referred to above was applicable only to those meeting and passing one another in opposite directions, that it had no application when one vehicle was making a turn across the path of the other, and that it was error to submit it in that situation. The purpose of RSA 262-A:21 is also to prevent collision between vehicles passing one another in opposite directions. While it may secondarily relate to the avoidance of accidents with other vehicles within the orbit of danger created by oncoming vehicles, I cannot conceive that it was intended in any way to guard against the danger from or to left-turning traffic which was being overtaken. Beraud v. Allstate Ins. Co., 251 So.2d 402 (La. App. *5581971); Sevin v. Diamond Drilling Co., 261 So.2d 375 (La. App. 1972); Salvitti v. Throppe, 343 Pa. 642, 23 A.2d 445 (1942). It has long been the law of this State that liability based on a violation of statutory duties attaches only for injuries which result from risks which the statute was designed to protect against. Flynn v. Gordon, 86 N.H. 198, 165 A. 715 (1933); Martin v. Kelley, 97 N.H. 466, 92 A.2d 163 (1952).
In this case there was no evidence that there was any vehicle coming in the opposite direction. Turcotte was headed in the same direction until he made his turn to the left. He was not therefore one for whose benefit RSA 262-A:21 was enacted. Mrs. Jones was not injured by collision with a car coming from the opposite direction nor from a danger created by such a car and therefore was not injured by a “hazard from which it was the purpose of the statute to protect [her].” Flynn v. Gordon, 86 N.H. at 200, 165 A. at 716. Since none of the consequences which the enactment was designed to guard against have resulted from its breach, such a breach does not constitute an actionable wrong even though some other injurious consequence has resulted. Id. In this case there is not even a showing that any more injurious consequences resulted from Kenneth’s being across the yellow line than would have resulted if he had stayed to the right of it. It was error therefore to submit RSA 262-A:21 to the jury.
I am aware that in Currier v. Grossman’s, 107 N.H. 159, 219 A.2d 273 (1966), and in Masterson v. Lacroix, 112 N.H. 416, 297 A.2d 658 (1972), similar statutes were submitted to the jury in cases involving vehicles going in the same direction. However, oncoming vehicles were involved in both cases and the applicability of the statute was not raised.