Court Opinion

ID: 9560492
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 17:49:57.230572+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:12:57.761350
License: Public Domain

Hall, Presiding Judge,
dissenting as to Division 2. I agree that the owner of a utility pole may be liable for its negligent placement. In Southern Bell Tel. & Tel. Co. v. Spears, 212 Ga. 537 (93 SE2d 659), the Supreme Court did not preclude this basis for liability; but it did make clear that the placement of a pole had to be a proximate cause of *820the resulting injury. I believe the facts here show plainly and palpably that the pole placement was not a concurring proximate cause of the plaintiff’s injuries.
By definition, another object is involved in any collision. One may truthfully say that if the particular object had not been there, the particular injury would not have occurred. That is not the doctrine of concurrent proximate cause, however. Legal cause is a limitation of factual cause. If a driver mounts a curb, he is not entitled to a clear path until he stops or regains the road; nor is the owner of an impeding object necessary liable for his failure to provide such a path.
In Georgia, the general test for liability in similar situations has been whether the object or hazard is maintained in such a place that it could be reached by a slight or ordinary deviation made by a careful traveler (variously described as one without fault on his part, one in the exercise of due diligence or one in the exercise of ordinary care). Hutson v. King, 95 Ga. 271 (22 SE 615); City Council of Augusta v. Dozier, 126 Ga. 524 (55 SE 234); Greenfield v. Watson, 54 Ga. App. 9 (186 SE 711); Poole v. Southern R. Co., 34 Ga. App. 290 (129 SE 297). While this test pertains to the owner’s duty, it also relates to proximate cause. The two are "inextricably interwoven.” Prosser on Torts (2d Ed.) p. 253, §47. Therefore, if the deviation is out of the ordinary and made by one not proceeding with care, then the maintenance of the object or hazard is not a concurring legal cause of the injuries. It is merely a condition upon which the acts of the traveler operate.
Whether or not a jury might find the driver here to be grossly negligent, under the undisputed facts it would hot be authorized to find him to have been traveling carefully or with due diligence. He entered a sharp, downward curve (which was familiar to him) at a speed at least five miles per hour greater than the maximum safe speed; he mounted a five-inch curb some 30 feet before the apex of the curve (which is the most likely spot to go off, according to plaintiff’s own evidence); he remained off the road for the entire 30 feet and was still driving with sufficient velocity *821not only to break the pole in two but to continue for another 12 feet until he ran into a tree. (The tree’s owner is not being sued). It is also worth noting that the parties here do not know of any previous accidents on this curve. In other words, it would appear to require more than ordinary non-perfect driving to have performed this feat.
These facts cannot possibly be interpreted as an accidental or inadvertent "straying” from the road; nor as a situation in which, assuming minor negligence, the car was thrown off at the apex into the pole by the reverse banking, the only reasonably foreseeable occurrence. It is plain and palpable that the sole proximate cause of injuries resulting from this collision was the action of the driver. I believe the trial court was correct in granting summary judgment.
I am authorized to state that Presiding Judge Eberhardt concurs in this dissent.