Court Opinion

ID: 9793031
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 02:40:58.143314+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:03:01.995324
License: Public Domain

HENRIOD, Justice
(dissenting).
I respectfully dissent. Although the main opinion selects facts out of context to arrive at a result negativing the defense of contributory negligence, it seems to me that the evidence of such negligence, even as stated in the opinion, clearly, and as a matter of law, gave ample warning that there was something dangerous and radically wrong with the electric system of this car, — and that evidence was brought out by plaintiff’s own wife. Plaintiff did not even testify in this case. Smoke coming from underneath the dashboard of a car, accompanied by an obviously dangerous circumstance that the windshield wipers could not be controlled, should alert any reason*277able person that a car should not be driven 30 or 40 miles over a highly-traveled interstate highway in mountainous terrain in a snowstorm. To do so seems to constitute negligence per se, not subject to any alternative conclusion, where the facts were in no way controverted, but admitted by everyone, and actually adduced, without controversion, by plaintiff in his case in chief.
Secondly, there was no evidence of any negligence or breach of warranty by defendants at all, and for aught we know from this record, the causa causans of the damage here as well may have been the attempt by any teenage vocational training student, who may have been frustrated in his attempt to purloin the car by crossing wires under the dashboard, — one of the most convenient, tempting and most easily accomplished feats of thieves, both adult and juvenile, so I have heard. There was absolutely nothing in this case to go to a jury save conjecture, — and plaintiff’s lamentable attempt to prove negligence on the basis of the res ipsa loquitur theory seems somewhat superficial, since there was no element of control by defendants over the vehicle whatever. The fact that a mechanic thought the fire was the result of “fault in the electric wiring,” ironically is not only the strongest, but at the same time the weakest evidence of negligence on the part of defendants, because it had absolutely no probative value as to •who caused the fire at all, — leaving the whole matter of causation in this case to unmitigated guesswork and unabashed conjecture, — which should not be playthings for juries or time bombs directed against insurance or other companies.