Court Opinion

ID: 9585865
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 23:04:32.833826+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:24:15.927847
License: Public Domain

Hill, Chief Justice,
dissenting.
I accept without question the proposition that the driver of a motor vehicle owes a duty to exercise due care to others using the highway. However, a mature user of the highway owes a duty to himself and others not to lie down thereon. Whether the deceased was injured when his pick-up truck went into the ditch or whether he survived that mishap and then passed out in the road is immaterial, because clearly his intoxication caused one or both. I would hold that a person who lies down at dusk or dark on the highway due to intoxication is, as a matter of law, more negligent than the driver of a vehicle who, distracted by the deceased’s vehicle in the ditch, fails to observe and avoid him. Thus, under the principles of comparative negligence, OCGA § 51-11-7 (Code Ann. § 105-603), the defendant is not liable for damages and the Court of Appeals was correct in holding that the defendant was entitled to a directed verdict.
In my view the majority errs by exhaustively showing that the defendant is required to exercise due care (about which there is no dispute) and then by summarily concluding that the defendant’s negligence was greater than the deceased’s. In my view, lying down in the middle of a highway at dusk or later due to intoxication amounts, as a matter of law, to a total lack of ordinary care and therefore precludes recovery. I therefore dissent.