Court Opinion

ID: 9846496
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 03:42:30.588457+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:19:35.542349
License: Public Domain

Deen, Presiding Judge,
concurring specially.
I fully concur in all divisions of the majority opinion except Division 2.1 agree there was no error in refusing to give Robinson’s charge on sudden emergency, but for different reasons than stated by the majority. I believe a charge on sudden emergency was authorized by the evidence. Though the evidence was sparse because Robinson had no memory of the accident, the testimony given by the tow truck driver describing Robinson’s encounter at night with a bus stopped in a lane of Interstate 75, and his last second attempt to avoid the collision, provided a sufficient basis to support a charge on sudden emergency. “ ‘(I)t is a well established rule that an instruction is not inapplicable where there is any evidence, however slight, on which to predicate it. (Cit.) It is not even necessary there should be direct evidence going to that point; it is enough if there be something from which a legitimate process of reasoning can be carried on in respect to it. (Cit.)’ [Cit.]” Franklin v. Hennrich, 196 Ga. App. 372, 375 (395 SE2d 859) (1990).
Robinson requested the following charge: “[W]hen a driver of a motor vehicle is confronted with a sudden emergency caused by the negligence of another, in such an emergency he is only charged with the duty of exercising ordinary care and diligence under the circumstances and is not barred from recovery because he exercised bad judgment under the circumstances.” The requested charge was an incomplete statement of the law of sudden emergency. See Franklin, supra at 374. Therefore, it was not error for the trial court to refuse to give it. French v. Stephens, 117 Ga. App. 61, 64 (159 SE2d 484) (1967).