Court Opinion

ID: 9636085
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 14:16:06.108516+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:09:42.227515
License: Public Domain

Dissenting Opinion by
Mr. Justice Musmanno:
A berm is to a road what a saucer is to a cup. A brimming cup may conceivably be served without any of the contents escaping over the sides, but common experience anticipates the likelihood of a jostle, jiggle or jolt which will always cause a few drops to spill from their container. Without saucers, whose suit or dress would be innocent of mar, stain or blemish? The slip ’twixt the cup and the lip that mankind accepts as routine is the same slip that road builders foresee in movement from pavement to berm.
The majority opinion in this case quotes from Scurfield v. Federal Laboratories, Inc., 335 Pa. 145, that the test of negligence is whether the wrongdoer could have anticipated and foreseen the likelihood of harm to the injured person, resulting from his act. That the defendant-contractors in this case visualized the possibility of motorists using the berm is conclusively estab*232lished by the fact that they erected signs warning westward-travelling motorists to stay off the berm. Why not warn the eastward-moving travellers? Driving to the left side of the road to pass'a parked or moving vehicle on one’s own right side of the road is not only legal and proper but so commonplace that to ignore the practice would be to defy the law of the road completely. Thus the defendants could not help but know that sporadically eastward-moving wayfarers would be compelled to move to the extreme northern edge of Street Road.
While Brusis had 11 feet of paved highway over which to drive in skirting the parked automobile, it could not be said as a matter of law that he would be negligent in giving the obstacle a wide berth. It must be remembered that he was hauling a trailer loaded with 625 bushels of spinach. The nature of his cargo, the length of his vehicle (42 feet) and its width (7y2 feet) compelled him to execute a' wider angle in moving around the parked car than would have been sufficient if he had been operating a smaller unit passenger vehicle. Moving within 11 feet of space to the edge of the road, would have restricted him to 3% feet of maneuverability which, with cumbersome trailer and load, would have made for a rather tight squeeze, not consistent with highway safety.
When the defendants dug along the road an 18 inch-wide treuch in which to lay a 10 inch gas pipe, a duty devolved upon them to contemplate potential dangers arising out of such an operation. If they had left the ditch uncovered and a motorist exercising due care had fallen into it, there could be no doubt of their responsibility in a trespass action for resulting damages to the injured traveller.
Section 368 of Restatement, Torts, provides: “A possessor of land who creates or maintains thereon *233an excavation or other artificial condition so near an existing highway that he realizes or should realize that it involves an unreasonable risk to others accidentally brought into contact therewith while traveling with reasonable care upon the highway, is subject to liability for bodily harm thereby caused to them.” In illustration of this principle, the Restatement quotes: “1. A digs a ditch immediately adjacent to a highway upon which his land abuts at a point where cars, though carefully driven, are likely to skid. B’s carefully driven car skids off the highway and into the ditch. A is liable to B.”
If the digger of a ditch adjoining a highway is required in law to expect a possible skidding which in itself is one of the more extraordinary incidents of motor travel, why shouldn’t he be required to anticipate the ordinary experience of overtaking and passing?
The berm of a road of such muddy softness that it cannot .hold the weight of a motor vehicle is just as dangerous as an open ditch. No reflective and responsible road-builder of a road flanking a precipice would cut. the side of the road sheer, leaving motorists exposed, without guard rail, to the peril of death or serious bodily harm if a wheel of their vehicles moved only an inch off the highway. There is no difference so far as negligence is concerned, between a soft muddy berm and an open ditch; and the difference between a ditch and a precipice is one of degree, not principle.
The majority opinion states that the defendants owed no duty to the plaintiffs. It is true that “if the actor’s conduct creates a recognizable risk of liarm only to a particular class of persons, the fact that it causes harm to a person of a different class, to whom the actor could not reasonably have anticipated injury, does not render the actor liable to the persons so injured.” But on the highways there is no caste. All travelers are *234alike before the law. They are all entitled to be held safe from the acts of negligence of others on or near the highway.
It is also true that one is not required to anticipate “what is remotely possible,” as stated in Tua v. Brentwood Motor Coach Co., 371 Pa. 570, but whether or not a given mishap falls within the orbit of foreseeability is not a question of law to be decided by judges, but an issue of fact for a jury to determine.
The plaintiffs presented evidence that the defendants built a ditch 18 inches wide along the edge of a much frequented highway, that the fill-in consisted of earth of such soft and mushy content that on the night of the accident it had turned into ankle-deep mud, that the defendants did not display any signs warning eastward-moving travellers of the unsafe condition of the berm, that no lights or flares illuminated the berm or gave warning to travellers to beware of the dangerous condition caused by the soft berm, that there were no barricades to guide travellers away from the berm, and that it would require one year for the earth above the ditch to harden sufficiently to sustain vehicles. The jury found that all these factors spelled out a clear case of negligence, under proper instructions of the trial court.
I would not disturb this factual finding.