Court Opinion

ID: 9656082
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 19:34:42.795447+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:13:28.038445
License: Public Domain

Currie, J.
{concurring). The evidence was conflicting as to whether the defendant teacher warned the plaintiff and his companion, Shong, of the danger present in the oil room due to the storage of acid at the time the defendant permitted them to enter such room to clean up the wax on the floor. However, the jury, by their answer to question 1 (b) of the special verdict, resolved this conflict in favor of the defendant, so on this appeal we must accept as a verity the fact that the two boys were so warned of the danger. In spite of such warning, in some unexplained manner, the acid bottle was upset spilling the acid upon plaintiff.
The plaintiff was not a child of tender years, but at the time of the accident he was fifteen years nine months of age. Furthermore, the testimony discloses that he was a boy of intelligence and in no way mentally retarded. Plaintiff was unable to give any explanation of how the accident happened, except that he, and not Shong, was the one who knocked over the bottle of acid. There is no possibility that such knocking over of the bottle could have happened except through some act of carelessness on the plaintiff’s part in direct disregard of the warning given by the defendant teacher. Such negligence on the part of the plaintiff should be held, as a matter of law, to have been at least as great, if not greater, than that of the defendant teacher.
In Wear v. Northern States Power Co. (1952), 262 Wis. 9, 53 N. W. (2d) 777, this court approved of a determination made by the trial court, that the negligence of the plaintiff’s intestate who placed himself in a position of danger in disregard of the express warning of his fellow employees and sustained injury as a result of such exposure to danger, must *23be held to have been at least as great as the negligence of the defendant power company. Such holding would seem to be controlling in the instant case so as to bar plaintiff from recovery, even though the negligence of defendant might possibly have presented a jury issue.
I am authorized to state that Mr. Justice Steinle joins in this concurring opinion.