Court Opinion

ID: 9577989
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 21:40:18.196346+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:22:14.993645
License: Public Domain

Williams, J.
(dissenting) — In Anderson v. Harrison, 4 Wn.2d 265, 103 P.2d 320 (1940), the identical contention was made that the jury was misled and confused as to the standard of a bus driver's care because "negligence" was defined in the instructions as: "'the want of ordinary care and diligence.'" Anderson, at 270. The Supreme Court held *748that the jury was not misled or confused, as it was instructed on the highest degree of care as well. Anderson, at 270.
It seems that the confusion in the majority opinion comes from treating the two instructions as "inconsistent and contradictory" rather than as accurate statements of the law. The general rule stated in instruction 5 is that:
Negligence is the failure to exercise ordinary care. It is the doing of some act which a reasonably careful person would not do under the same or similar circumstances or the failure to do something which a reasonably careful person would have done under the same or similar circumstances.
Ordinary care means the care a reasonably careful person would exercise under the same or similar circumstances.
There is no question that this instruction is correct. The same or similar circumstance is the operation of a motor carrier. This calls for "the highest degree of care" by the operator and was stated in instruction 7 as follows:
A common carrier has a duty to its passengers to use the highest degree of care consistent with the practical operation of its type of transportation and its business as a common carrier. Any failure of a common carrier to use such care is negligence.
The jury was instructed on the general requirement of the care to be followed and on the exceptional degree of care charged to a common carrier. Counsel could much better argue with both instructions before the jury by comparing the usual standard of care with which they were familiar from everyday experience with the special one of a common carrier. Whether he did is not known because of the appeal on a short record.
In that connection, the majority summarily casts aside the authority of Anderson because that "opinion does not indicate the context in which the ordinary care instruction was given to the jury." The context in which the instructions were given to the jury is absent from this case, also.
*749I would affirm.
Reconsideration denied September 9, 1982.
Review denied by Supreme Court November 22,1982.