Court Opinion

ID: 9449680
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 16:19:18.268421+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:31:56.414353
License: Public Domain

KILEY, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
I dissent.
In deciding whether there is any evidence to entitle plaintiffs to a jury trial in this diversity case governed by Illinois law, this court should consider only the evidence favorable to plaintiffs, draw inferences most strongly in their favor and disregard contradictory and contrary evidence. Osborn v. Leuffgen, 381 Ill. 295, 45 N.E.2d 622 (1942), Hunter v. Troup, 315 Ill. 293, 146 N.E. 321 (1924), Kiriluk v. Cohn, 16 Ill.App.2d 385, 148 N.E.2d 607 (1958).
Under this rule the record justifies in plaintiffs’ favor the following evidence and inferences: that Rice was driving Harper’s truck in the fog at twenty-five miles per hour on a two-lane highway ; that he saw no lights ahead of him until, when fifty feet away, he saw, in the glare of his own headlights, the reflector lights on the Ringsby truck whose brake lights were not working and had not warned him the truck had stopped; that he immediately applied his brakes, which prior to the trip had been checked as safe; and that unable to avoid collision he turned into the lefthand lane and collided with two oncoming trucks whose lights he had not seen in the fog.
On this evidence only, in my opinion, reasonable men could differ as to whether plaintiffs or Cash were or were not guilty of negligence proximately causing the collision.