Court Opinion

ID: 9794088
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 02:58:46.631077+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:11:32.978260
License: Public Domain

WOLFE, Chief Justice
(concurring).
I am considering this case from two aspects: first, from the standpoint of the traveler on the highway who is without fault except as he may have timely observed the plight of the plaintiff (plaintiff’s inattention under § 480 of Restatement of Torts) and failed to thereafter utilize with reasonable competence a clear existing ability to avoid harm to the plaintiff; second, from the standpoint of a youth whose conduct should at all events be judged in the light of “such person’s age and capacity.” I have not neglected to take into consideration the burden placed on the traveler in instances where his situation is rapidly changing in reference to the situation of another traveler, in which case, as has been often stated, the last clear chance doctrine should not be applicable for the very reason that a clear opportunity on the part of the traveler who is sought to be charged is hard to assay. Consequently, he should not be held responsible for the results of an accident not of his own making nor to which he had contributed, and in respect to which he was not guilty of antecedent or primary negligence. So in my thinking on the application of the clear chance doctrine I have eliminated the idea that Rogers was guilty of primary or antecedent negligence such as too great speed or inadequate lookout in the fore part of this episode when the defendant first saw the deceased and blew his horn. Timely blowing of the horn was what Darlene Johnson, driver of the car in the case of Graham v. Johnson, 109 Utah 346, 166 P. 2d 230, failed to do.
I prefer to consider this case in respect to defendant’s last clear chance duty, as has the author of the opinion, from a point when the defendant was by his own judgment 78 feet from the point of impact, at which time he testifies *554he had his first impression of the danger of a collision. I think we should assess his last clear chance duty toward the deceased from that point in the brief history of the events preceding the collision.
With this in mind I depart for a moment to consider § 480, Restatement of Torts. This section has never been quite clear to me because it appears to bring into the case antecedent negligence of the defendant which serves unnecessarily to complicate the problem. For a handy analysis, I requote the section. It reads:
“A plaintiff who, by the exercise of reasonable vigilance could have observed the danger created by the defendant’s negligence [underscoring mine] in time to have avoided harm therefrom, may recover if, but only if, the defendant (a) knew of the plaintiff’s situation, and (b) realized or had reason to realize that the plaintiff was inattentive and therefore unlikely to discover his peril in time to avoid the harm, and (c) thereafter is negligent in failing to utilize with reasonable care and competence his then existing ability to avoid harming the plaintiff.”
Why is it necessary to frame a rule in the light of danger created by the defendant’s negligence? I think the phrase “defendant’s negligence” should read “defendant’s presence.” The duty of the defendant toward the plaintiff would arise even though defendant had not been guilty of antecedent negligence, but whose only negligence arose from his (the defendant’s) failure to avoid doing harm to an inattentive plaintiff when defendant realized the inattention and further realized that he, the defendant, if he continued on his course, or failed to alert plaintiff, would be likely to harm him; and so realizing had the ability and the opportunity to prevent such harm.
The fact that the defendant may or may not have been guilty of primary antecedent negligence appears to me to be irrelevant in the last clear chance aspect of this case. If the defendant had never at .any time closely prior to the accident been proceeding with lack of circumspection as to speed, etc., he would not have been exonerated from re*555sponsibility for the accident if he, the defendant, had had opportunity to stop or materially reduce his speed so as to substantially mitigate the consequences of a collision or timely warn the boy when he, the defendant, was aware or could reasonably have been found by the jury to have been aware that the boy did not realize his danger, and the defendant did realize it and yet failed to utilize with reasonable care and competence his existing ability to avoid harming the boy.
I realize that this means leaving to the jury the questions of whether the defendant was cognizant of the boy’s inattention to his approach and whether the defendant had such timely notice of the boy’s unawareness as would enable the defendant to act so as to avoid harm to the boy. I am cognizant that unless jury action in such questions is allowed only in cases where it appears, under the evidence that the defendant did have an ample unutilized opportunity to avoid the accident after he learned of the probable unawareness of the plaintiff to his approach, we shall intrude a seeming last clear chance factor in many accident cases and thus subject defendants to liability for a plaintiff’s negligence because the late and new negligence of the defendant in not utilizing his clear chance to avoid the accident insulated the plaintiff’s original careless conduct. Such consequences would, tersely expressed, make the defendant responsible for avoiding the effects of plaintiff’s own negligence, a consequence never intended by the authors of the humanitarian doctrine, and a perversion of the fundamental concepts that liability for accident should follow fault, and that a plaintiff cannot recover even for the negligence of the defendant if he, himself, has not conducted himself circumspectly because the law does not aid plaintiffs who are themselves imprudent even though another (defendant) has also shared in the failure to conduct himself with prudence. We have no doctrine of apportioning the effect of negligence in this state. Whether after the experience under the Federal Employers’ Liability Act, 45 U. S. C. A. § 51 *556et seq., such apportionment would be salutary or whether the reform should be along the lines of teaching juries that slight negligence on the part of the plaintiff may not prevent recovery, but only where the so-called contributory negligence is a substantial and efficient factor in the result, or whether the whole law of assessing damages claimed to be attributable to negligence should be reformed so that the claimed damages will bear some relationship to the gravity of the delictions, is for the legislature.
But in this case there are circumstances which I think make it a jury question. The boy gave no sign of recognition of defendant’s sound warnings although given twice —certainly a circumstance in itself to put the defendant on notice that the boy had probably not heard them and cause him to again sound a third and emphatic warning even if he had no time to stop or slow down. It was not a case of a rapid change of relative positions of two fast moving vehicles. The cycling boy was riding a comparatively slow-moving vehicle. This circumstance alone may give rise to a situation where it is incumbent on the jury to determine in respect to that vehicle whether the comparatively more rapid one had the clear opportunity to avoid the accident or mitigate it into a possible minor collision. Certainly the vehicle which comes with the potentiality for substantial damage, as stated by Mr. Justice McDONOUGH, owes a duty toward a lad on a frail vehicle which duty may not be discharged by the application of logic alone. Regard for life and limb of children does impose on motorists a duty toward those children beyond that called for by adults regardless of violations of law committed by those children.
I have heretofore discussed this case as involving only a last clear chance problem. I agree with Mr. Justice McDONOUGH that whether the defendant was guilty of primary negligence was under the circumstances a question for the jury. But would that question be pertinent if the jury should find that the last clear chance principle was *557applicable? In Graham v. Johnson it was admitted to be applicable because if Gary Graham was definitely negligent in law by playing in the street, then just as definitely under the evidence of that case was Darlene Johnson aware of his presence and aware of his inattention for she had watched from across the street, while washing the Johnson car, the boys and Gary Graham playing in the street. So if Gary was negligent in law in so playing, so was the Johnson girl negligent in failing to give a sound signal, and this was not an antecedent neligence nor a primary neligence, but her first and only negligence.
There is nothing in the law that I know of which exempts a negligence arising from the violaton of a rule or ordinance such as street playing by children and the inattention which attends such playing from the application of the last clear chance doctrine. In the case of Graham v. Johnson, Gary Graham, a 13-year old boy, was wrongly playing in the street in violation of an ordinance. This was negligence in law, and this negligence imposed on Darlene Johnson, leisurely minor driver of the Johnson automobile, the duty to timely sound the horn, definitely a last clear chance to warn the inattentive children on the street. Darlene did not perform that duty; hence the owner of the Johnson car for whom Darlene was acting was responsible to Gary regardless of any question whether Gary as a 13-year old boy had the intelligence and experience to realize the danger of playing in the street, and regardless of his negligence. Even an imbecile playing in the street is entitled to the protection of the last clear chance of a driver. When it -is once determined that the driver of a car has in law the last clear chance opportunity and that primary or antecedent negligence is not in the case, it is then not necessary to probe into the question of whether the one to whom such last clear opportunity is owing was of an age to be accountable for contributory negligence. That only comes in when the case is in the stage where it is necessary to determine whether the infant is to be charged with contributory negligence which would destroy his right to recover, because of *558such negligence, against the defendant. But where the case has progressed to the state of the establishment by the fact-finder of a last clear chance obligation, contributory negligence — unless perhaps a further or new negligence on the part of the plaintiff preventing defendant from fulfilling a last clear chance obligation — is immaterial.
This illustrates further the need to guard against an extension of the last clear chance doctrine beyond the domain it was humanely means to serve.
I think it logically follows from my analysis of the reason why we were not in Graham v. Johnson called on to take up in that case the matter of the possible effect of contributory negligence of the 13-year old Graham boy and the attendant problem of how such negligence is determined, as well as what I have hitherto said, that I fully agree with Mr. Justice McDONOUGH in his clear enunciation of the principle that
“If the violation of a statute by a child is found to evidence less care than that which ordinarily could be expected of a child of the same age, intelligence, knowledge, and experience, he could be held contributorily negligent barring his reovery”
when contributory negligence is applicable. Also I agree with the statement reading:
“On an issue of contributory negligence [which in the last clear chance phase of this case is not present], this measuring and judging the accountability of children of immature age is ordinarily to be left to a jury as a question of fact about which there might be reasonable difference of opinion”
except that at .this time I do not commit myself as to whether the standard is
“that which ordinarily could be expected of a child of the same age, intelligence, knowledge, and experience”
or
“the age, intelligence, knowledge and experience of the particular child in question.”