Court Opinion

ID: 9713383
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 05:14:33.997538+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:18.439251
License: Public Domain

Smith, J.
(concurring in result). It is in Jamie-son and Brown’s Michigan Automobile Law (2d ed), that we best find described the state into which this important branch of the law has fallen. The authors, with abundant citation, note (section 110, p 319) that “in the cases where there are no witnesses, the presumption may be relied upon entirely as declaring the decedent not negligent; it may be used only to send the case to the jury; or the presumption may not be relied upon at all. In the cases where there are witnesses we have an even more confused situation.” Thus the law wavers from case to case, appeals multiply, litigants’ expenses mount, justice is uncertain, and meaningless distinctions beget differentiations even less meritorious, all a miserable progeny of confusion compounded.
The situation presents a good example of how an unqualified statement in an opinion, taken out of context, grows into a careless dictum, which, with uncritical repetition, becomes canonized into a “rule” of law.
The early law was clear. It presumed, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, that a decedent acted with due care and that he was free from negligence. Whether or not’ the presumption results from our taking judicial notice of the instinct of self-preservation (see 9 Wigmore, Evidence [3d ed], *473§ 2510) is unimportant. We need ho preceptor to advise us that a normal human being reacts with prudence in the presence of peril. The presumption, of course, may be rebutted by contrary evidence, direct or circumstantial, verbal or physical. But evidence it must be, not guess, not speculation. We made all this clear in the early case of Mynning v. Detroit, Lansing & Northern R. Co., 64 Mich 93, 102 (8 Am St Rep 804), wherein we said:
“The presumption of law is that the person killed at a crossing did stop, and look and listen, and will prevail in the absence of direct testimony on the subject. But where there is affirmative, direct, and creditable testimony that the person injured went upon the track without stopping to look and listen, the presumption is rebutted and displaced.”
We come, with the passage of years, however, to the case of Foote v. Huelster, 272 Mich 194. Here, as the Court pointed out (p 198), “there was enough evidence relative to the place and character of the collision and skid marks upon the pavement to present an issue of fact relative to the care exercised by Mr. Foote (the deceased).” So far, this is all routine. There was evidence, physical and otherwise. But the opinion does not stop here. It goes on with the sentence: “Where there is an eyewitness to an accident the issue ©f due care rests upon proof and not upon presumption.” Are we to gather from this statement that the mere presence of an eyewitness alone is enough to destroy the presumption, regardless of what he saw, regardless of whether or not he in fact saw anything of evidentiary merit? Obviously not. For in the Foote Case there were eyewitnesses to the accident and, in addition, they testified as to the facts and circumstances. The statement, read in its context, is accurate. Wrenched out of context, however, it has been cited again and again *474(with, a dictum similar in language in Mullaney v. Woodruff, 280 Mich 66) as authority for the proposition that the mere presence of an eyewitness destroys the presumption, regardless of the testimony offered.
So it was employed in Peck v. Hampel, 293 Mich 252. In this case there were 2 eyewitnesses to the accident, the defendant driver and his accompanying wife. Whatever of evidentiary value they may have observed, however, must forever remain a secret, for neither testified. Yet the Court held as follows (pp 261, 262):
“The principal question in this case concerns the contributory negligence of decedent. Citation of authority is unnecessary to establish the principle that where there are no eyewitnesses to the death, the law will presume that decedent was in the exercise of ordinary care, but where there are eyewitnesses the presumption of due care on the part of decedent vanishes.
“In Foote v. Huelster, 272 Mich 194, we said:
“ Where there is an eyewitness to an accident the issue of due care rests upon proof and not upon presumption. This is so even if the eyewitness is the adverse party.’
“In my opinion the defendant was an eyewitness to the accident. He was presumed to see what was there to be seen.”
The above represents a complete distortion of the principle that the presumption may be rebutted only by some kind of evidence and, as a practical matter, destroys it, for rare is the accident which does not involve the presence of at least 2 eyewitnesses, the alleged tort-feasor and the injured person.
(We might add that we would be the more impressed by the Court’s makeweight argument in Peck v. Hampel, supra, that decedent was walking diagonally across the intersection [whatever- this may *475have had to do with proximate cause] were it not for the recent citation of this case on the eyewitness point in Black v. Ambs, 307 Mich 644, 648, coupled therein with the Foote Casé excerpt, which speaks merely of “an eyewitness to an accident.”)
It should not he thought, however, that such cases stand alone. If this were true, however indefensible the result might be, there would, at least, be a certainty to the matter. But authority opposite in principle abounds. See dissent of McAllister, J., in Peck v. Hampel, supra; Finucan, The Presumption of Due Care in Michigan, 33 MSBJ, March, 1954, p 28; and cases cited and referred to by Mr. Justice Black herein.
There have thus developed 2 lines of “authority,” “reconcilable” only' on minute factual differences. The opposing eases appear side by side in the reports, actually in direct conflict, yet each standing as authority of some kind. Again and again this issue arises, against a background of confusion, dissent, and uncertainty.
In this case we have a pedestrian who was struck by an automobile on or near a public highway. The witnesses to the accident saw nothing of evidentiary value. This is the typical situation in which the presumption arises. I agree, however, that upon the facts, the pleadings, and the pretrial statement, the presumption has been rebutted and that decedent was guilty of contributory negligence as a matter of law. But I cannot agree with Mr. Justice. Boyles that “any discussion of the issue of presumption of due care would he merely obiter dicta,” or with the Chief Justice that “the circumstances under which the presumption should be indulged” is apparently unnecessary to decision in the case before us.
I make this point because much of the confusion described by Jamieson and Brown, supra, is traceable directly to the misconception implicit in.the *476above. For dictum is a statement in an opinion not necessary to tbe decision. A classic statement is that of Curtis, J., in Carroll v. Lessee of Carroll, 16 How (57 US) 275, 286, 287 (14 L ed 936); “if it (the point or matter commented upon) might have been decided either way without affecting any right brought into question, then, according to the principles of the common law, an opinion on such a question is not a decision.” Let us apply the test. Could the applicability of the presumption of due care have been decided either way without affecting plaintiff’s right of recovery? The question supplies its own answer. We cannot (in a no-eyewitness case) reach our decision of contributory negligence on the part of the plaintiff without giving the most exhaustive consideration to the presumption of due care. (See the careful discussion of both aspects of the problem in Gillett v. Michigan United Traction Co., 205 Mich 410.) If, however, we think the presumption .of due care as one legal doctrine, and the issue of contributory negligence (as a matter of law) as another, this other so entirely unrelated, to the former, that any discussion of the former is mere obiter dictum when our decision turns on the latter, then, obviously our holdings with respect to this problem (which is in truth single and indivisible) will, as Jamieson and Brown point out, present a “confused situation.”
Here the applicability of the presumption was discussed in the trial court, briefed and argued upon appeal, and with respect to it we must reach a decision before we can hold that there was contributory negligence as a matter of law. I reject, then, its dismissal as mere obiter. The presumption is a part and parcel of the issue we must decide. With respect to it the law should be clarified. We should make -it clear to the profession' and to our people, lest injustice .be done through the perpetuation of error, *477that the mere presence of eyewitnesses to an accident is not enough to rebut the presumption of due care. The question always to be asked, and answered, is, What of evidentiary value did they see? Such eyewitnesses must, to destroy the presumption, present “affirmative, direct, and' creditable testimony” (Mynning v. Detroit, Lansing & Northern R. Co., supra) showing decedent’s negligence. We take testimony, not attendance.
Subject to the above, I concur in reversal, with costs to appellants.
Black, J., concurred with Smith, J.