Court Opinion

ID: 9625370
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 07:38:24.416505+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:06:07.327388
License: Public Domain

WINDES, Justice
(specially concurring).
A nine-year-old boy was allowed unattended to play and swim in the surf and fish from a pier over the ocean where the water was approximately 30 feet in depth. This was a condition that did not exist at the time of the rendition of the original decree. Exposure of the child to the hazards incident to this practice was the only possible changed condition. Consequently, to authorize the amendment of the decree, the court must have necessarily decided that such exposure was not for the best interests and proper protection of the infant. The majority correctly states that there was no doubt that the boy’s activities subjected him to certain hazards and then proceeds to at least partially base the decision upon the ground that this was a reasonable hazard. With this I cannot agree because whether the risk was reasonable or unreasonable under these conditions is a matter that the law permits the trial court to decide. It is a matter concerning which judicial minds might well disagree. .Under such-, circum*179stances the question is not whether the judges of this court would have made an original like ruling, but whether a judicial mind, in view of the law and the circumstances, could have made the ruling without exceeding the bounds of reason. We cannot substitute our discretion for that of the trial judge. If there be grounds for disagreement, the law does not permit us to disturb the trial court’s decision. 5 C.J.S., Appeal and Error, § 1583(b), page 476; F. M. Slagle & Co. v. Bushnell, 70 S.D. 250, 16 N.W.2d 914, 156 A.L.R. 1070.
Many parents would not expose their child to this danger unattended; others less cautions probably would, thus demonstrating that there is ample grounds for a trial court to decide either that it was or was not an unreasonable risk and we under the law would have no right to disturb such decision on the basis that the trial court abused its discretion.
In the instant case where the trial court did go beyond the bounds of reason was in the field of inconsistency. The effect of the trial judge’s decision was that it was an unreasonable risk to which the child’s welfare demanded he not be subjected for a period of two months, but was a reasonable risk to which he could be subjected for two weeks of each year. The latter finding neutralizes the former and thereby robs the decision of any reasonable basis. This is the reason and only sound legal reason upon which the trial court can and should be reversed.
For this reason I concur in the result. '