Court Opinion

ID: 9561949
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 18:19:23.262698+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:16:42.334719
License: Public Domain

Parker, J.,
concurring in the result. The claimant, Cleo Huff, testified before the deputy hearing commissioner as follows:
“On the day in question, October 15, 1959, that afternoon we were almost at the church, me and Brenda, we were talking. So this Molly Sykes she said something. . .That is Odessie’s sister. We weren’t far from the church so I got off at the church. The next morning when I got on the bus she came up and told me that -she was fussing at Brenda. By then, the bus hadn’t even gotten to Brenda. After then she left and she and Brenda started fighting and then Odessie Sykes, she was arguing at me .and said she was going to make -some rules to go by on the bus. So Molly started fighting and we fought -until James stopped .the bus, -and came back and stopped us. That afternoon, after we got to Brenda’s turn, the bus stopped to put Brenda off, Brenda got to the door and I heard Odessie say, “Ain’t you going to do something?" Then Molly came over to where I was. She jumped on me and ■started fighting. Yes, this was in the bus when she jumped on me and started fighting. I saw Odessie up and she out me. This was ■on or about the 15th of October 1959. On the way home in the -afternoon, the occasion I was cut. I was cut right here on the left arm. Brenda told James, the driver of the bus, that she had a knife. When he got back there she bad cut me then. There was never any monitor on the bus at all during the year that I know of.
“Later in the school year, the day before school ended, we were going home that afternoon, and I was up there so me and her we hit at each other about the same time, and Thurman Paytiller stood in between us and then she cut me. That is all I know. She stabbed me, right here, and here.”
In my opinion, the injuries received on 25 May 1960 by the claimant, Cleo Huff, could have been reasonably foreseeable by the Nort*81hampton County Board of Education, if Broadnax, the driver of the school bus on 15 October 1959, had not negligently failed to report to the Northampton County Board of Education what had taken place on the school bus on 15 October 1959, and the findings of fact of the deputy hearing commissioner, affirmed by the Full Commission, and the Judge, to the contrary are not supported by competent evidence. As I read the record, claimant on her own testimony was guilty of contributory negligence in voluntarily entering into the fight on 25 May 1960 in which she was cut, and therefore by her own showing she is barred of any recovery under our State Tort Claims Act, General Statutes Chapter 143, Article 31. For that reason I concur in the result.