Court Opinion

ID: 9519898
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 01:27:03.891668+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:45:17.952580
License: Public Domain

Mr. PRESIDING JUSTICE SIMKINS, dissenting: The mother was in charge of the child on the day in question. This is not the case of a child wandering from an unfenced yard into or near a busy street. Rather the issue is the mother’s established course of conduct and supervision, and the “practice” involved in recrossing the street Or road. It is her alleged lack of supervision, her knowing acquiescence in the procedure which raises the question. The fact that she accompanied the child to the comer on the day in question and either directed her crossing or escorted her across the street and had done so on previous occasions demonstrates her awareness of the dangers involved. She was also aware that the child, 4 years of age, in endeavoring to recross the street, would stand beside the road waiting for assistance. That, indeed, was the practice. Whether Nancy Sheley was exercising proper supervision and control over the child in light of all the attendant facts and circumstances, including the age and capacity of the minor and the nature of the danger to which the child was exposed, was a question of fact for the jury. Payne v. Kingsley, 59 Ill.App.2d 245, 207 N.E.2d 177; Strasma v. Lemke, 111 Ill.App.2d 377, 250 N.E.2d 305. The defendant’s post-trial motion explicitly raised the question of ex-cessiveness of damages in connection with the trial judge’s refusal to give the instruction, and the failure to give the instruction is assigned as error here. Since the instruction goes only to the issue of damages it seems to me that the refusal to meet the question is predicated on a stringently applied technicality consisting of the failure of defendant to use one magic word. I would affirm on the issue of liability, reverse the finding on damages and remand for a new trial on that issue. It was error to refuse the instruction.