Court Opinion

ID: 9566864
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 19:44:06.36288+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:42:56.100604
License: Public Domain

Deen, Judge,
dissenting. I thoroughly agree with a statement in the majority opinion as follows: "The fact that the vehicle may have been a family purpose vehicle when used by members of the family or household would not necessarily make it one when used by a third party.” (Emphasis supplied.) My position is that this is true, and it is also true that it would not necessarily remove it from the family purpose scope where a member of the family delegates another to do a family chore. Here a jury verdict is being overturned and judgment notwithstanding the verdict awarded the defendant although: 1. Defendant admitted the car was a family *730purpose car. 2. Defendant admitted it was being driven at the request of defendant’s wife. 3. Defendant admitted the purpose of the trip was to buy refreshments for the defendant’s family. 4. The uncontradicted evidence showed that the defendant’s daughter and her friends were making clothes (costumes) under the directions of defendant’s wife in defendant’s home and that they needed thread, material and refreshments, all of which are, if the jury find them so, necessities which a wife has the implied authority to purchase. Mrs. Rice, then, had the right and duty to procure these goods, and she had the right to use the car for family purposes, and she certainly, if the jury so found (even though not "necessarily”) had the right to dispatch the car with a licensed driver to perform a family duty which it devolved upon her as a mother of the family to get performed.
The decision in this case not only grants a judgment to the defendant regardless of whether a jury question on the wife’s agency was presented, but it makes it impossible in such a case for a plaintiff ever to recover: (a) The owner of the car is dead, (b) This court puts the burden to show directly, rather than circumstantially, that the wife was authorized by the husband to send the car on a family errand by designating another driver, (c) This makes it necessary for the wife to offer evidence both that she was the agent of her husband in regard to the car, and that he specifically authorized her as such agent to designate a driver other than herself, (d) But the wife as agent cannot prove this agency by her own declarations, the principal being dead. "Agency cannot be proved by the declaration of the alleged agent. It is mere hearsay, and has no probative value.” Griffith v. Federal Land Bank, 190 Ga. 578, 580 (10 SE2d 71) and citations, (e) Therefore, according to the majority reasoning, these facts can never be proved and a plaintiff can never prove her case.
I think it unnecessary and unworkable to put such a burden on a plaintiff. Rather, the jury has a right to assess the totality of the circumstances, and to draw an inference, from the undisputed facts that (a) the wife was in charge of a group of young children, (b) the car was in her custody and was a family purpose car, and (c) thread, materials and refreshments are presumed necessities for the procurement of which she is her husband’s agent — the jury has a right under these circumstances to conclude that she had a right to send the driver to the store on this errand as she would her own child or any other employee. Cf. Turner v. Hall’s Admx. (Ky.) 252 S. W. 2d 30, where the court held that the entire purpose of the *731family purpose doctrine would be destroyed if the owner could relieve himself of liability by specific instructions known only to himself and the family member involved.
Let me add that I reach this conclusion also because of the reasons set out by Judge Pannell.