Court Opinion

ID: 9773065
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 17:35:42.236039+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:31:49.831008
License: Public Domain

LEIBSON, Justice,
dissenting.
Respectfully, I dissent.
The trial court should not have given a contributory negligence instruction. The only evidence presented to support such an instruction was evidence that the Assad boy was playing with a BB gun against his father’s instructions.
The sole legal cause of the injury to the Assad boy was the negligence of the older boy, Nick Skaggs, in attempting to walk or run up an incline covered with ice and snow carrying a loaded BB gun with the safety “off.” If the safety had been “on” the gun would not have discharged when Skaggs slipped and fell. The safe handling of the gun in his hand was his sole responsibility. There was no evidence that the Assad boy, who was some eighty feet away when he was injured, knew about or participated in the unsafe manner in which the Skaggs boy was handling the gun.
It is the law of this case that it was not negligence for the Skaggs boy to play with the gun. That is the reason that Skaggs’ father was held not negligent, as a matter of law, for permitting his son to do so.
It is patently inconsistent to hold on the one hand that it was not negligent for Skaggs’ father, Knolan Skaggs, to permit his child to play unsupervised with BB guns, but on the other hand to say it was negligent for Assad, his ten year old friend, to play with BB guns with him. If Knolan Skaggs could assume his son could safely play with BB guns then Assad could make the same assumption. The Assad boy disobeyed his father’s instructions not to play with BB guns. But disobeying his father is not a reason to bar his claim.
For the reasons herein stated, I believe Assad is entitled to a judgment in his favor as a matter of law. He should have received a directed verdict on the issue of liability. Only the issue of damages should have been submitted to the jury.