Court Opinion

ID: 9614715
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 04:27:33.315395+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:03:38.357320
License: Public Domain

Deen, Presiding Judge,
dissenting.
I must respectfully dissent, because I believe that the trial court properly granted summary judgment for the appellee.
Both parties rely upon the recent case of Jackson v. Moore, 190 Ga. App. 329 (378 SE2d 726) (1989), in which a 16-year-old child stol his mother’s car keys from her purse while she took a shower, drov the car, and injured the plaintiff in a collision. In Jackson, becaus the child took the car without permission, and because the mother although aware of her son’s previous juvenile record of burglary shoplifting and conspiracy to commit theft, had no knowledge of th child’s driving, this court found that the defendant mother was insu lated from liability for her son’s mischief and entitled to summar *621judgment.
Decided July 11, 1989
Rehearing denied July 31, 1989
Wetzel, Shaw & Quinn, Michael L. Wetzel, for appellant.
Drew, Eckl & Farnham, M. Gino Brogdon, Arthur H. Glaser, Jeffrey R. Joyce, for appellee.
Jackson does appear to control the instant case, and in favor of the appellee. If anything, the facts of this case are more strongly in the appellee’s favor than were the facts in Jackson for the defendant parent. The appellee here, in not having any bullets, installing a trigger lock and keeping the keys himself, and in not revealing where he stored the gun, certainly took more measures to prevent mischief than did the mother in Jackson. (To match this, the Jackson mother perhaps would have had to install a steering wheel lock and keep the fuel tank empty, or the child would have had to “hot wire” the car.) It took two affirmative criminal acts for the appellee’s son to use the pistol, i.e., theft and criminal damage to property. The appellee also had no knowledge of any prior assaultive behavior by his son.
If the defendant parent in Jackson was entitled to summary judgment, so was the appellee parent in this case. If the child in these types of cases had been convicted of concealing a knife, would the parents who placed a lock on the kitchen drawer containing knives be liable? I think not. If the child in Jackson had previously stolen and driven their car and hit someone or, in the instant case, stolen the pistol and shot someone, or, in the illustration given, had stolen a knife and stabbed someone, a different rule of responsibility and result would obtain.
I am authorized to state that Judge Sognier and Judge Benham join in this dissent.