Court Opinion

ID: 9450319
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 16:41:41.081801+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:32:14.664408
License: Public Domain

MADDEN, Judge
(dissenting).
I think the court’s decision is wrong, and I dissent.
The Federal Tort Claims Act provides that the applicable law is the law of the state in which the alleged tort occurred. In this case, the unfortunate incident occurred in the State of Washington. The court has, in effect, applied the Uniform Motor Vehicle Code of 1944, a proposed model statute tendered to all the states but which, so far as I know, has not been adopted in any state without some modification of its provision, and certainly had not been adopted by the State of Washington without an important modification directly applicable to this case.
It is relevant, I think, to note that the Government in its brief in support of the judgment of the District Court does not take the position that the Uniform Motor Vehicle Code is the “supreme law of the land, * * * anything in the * * * laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.” Indeed, the Government’s brief does not even make passing mention of the Uniform Motor Vehicle Code, and I think that was a correct estimate of its relevancy to this case.
The Washington statute is quoted in the opinion of the court. It provides that in a situation such as that involved in this case, the pedestrian shall have the right of way in a cross-walk, but no pedestrian shall so suddenly put himself in the path of a vehicle that it is impossible for the driver to yield the right of way. In short, a pedestrian who does that will have only himself to blame for his injury. Following this “but” language is the sentence :
“This provision shall not apply under the conditions stated hereinafter.”
Immediately thereinafter is this paragraph :
“Whenever any vehicle is stopped at a marked crosswalk * * * to permit a pedestrian to cross the roadway, the operator of any other vehicle approaching from the rear shall not overtake and pass such stopped vehicle.”
In the ordinary situation in which there is no obstruction of the vision of the pedestrian,. it is proper that he should be required to use that vision to assure his own safety. But in the situation covered by the paragraph quoted just above, the Washington Legislature recognized that neither the pedestrian nor the driver of the vehicle approaching from the rear of the stopped vehicle can see the other. The Legislature concluded that if accidents were to be prevented in such situations, a hard and fast rule was required, and it made the rule that the driver approaching from the rear “shall not overtake and pass such stopped vehicle.” The rule was made to prevent injuries to pedestrians in such situations. In the instant case the defendant’s driver violated the rule and, because he violated it, the plaintiff was seriously hurt.
The District Court made a finding:
That Sergeant Allen E. Craig was guilty of no negligence at the time and place mentioned above.
This finding, which passeth understanding, is quite properly discarded by this court, which says, “In any event, we assume for purposes of the present case that the statute applied and that Sgt. Craig violated its provisions and was negligent as a matter of law.” It seems to me that the District Court’s erroneous finding that Sgt. Craig was innocent of fault quite naturally led that court into its conclusion that the conduct of the plaintiff, Mrs. Dabol, was the sole legal cause of the accident. The court makes its finding about her conduct in the language of contributory negligence, which *170is illogical since it follows a finding that the driver was guilty of no negligence.
However, the real issue in the case is whether the Washington statute required that Mrs. Dabol, having waited a considerable time for a break in the automobile traffic which would leave the crosswalk available for her, and having properly committed herself to the crossing, and having passed two automobiles, one parked in the curb lane and one stopped to allow her to pass, could assume that she might, as she did, devote her attention to what the situation would be on the other half of the street, which was a few feet ahead of her, and in which she did not yet have the right of way, or whether she must go peeking around the corner of the stopped automobile in anticipation that a driver, in plain violation of the law, would collide with her if she proceeded straight ahead.
I think the Washington statute has given us the answer to that issue in plain language. In the first paragraph it tells us that the pedestrian, in certain circumstances, must not suddenly get in the path of an automobile which has no real opportunity to stop. Then it says that the provision relating to the negligence of the pedestrian shall not apply in the situation in which the law requires the potentially dangerous automobile to stop, and in which neither the pedestrian nor the driver can see the other, and in which there is, in fact, a pedestrian, though the driver cannot see him. Is there something so fundamentally fair and right about the common law of contributory negligence that a legislature cannot, even by plain language, abolish it in clearly defined situations? When legislatures abolished certain common law defenses, including contributory negligence, in certain labor situations — among others, injuries to children in factories— there were anguished cries that these changes in the law spelled the doom of free enterprise.
In all humanity, why could not a legislator of the State of Washington stand at a cross-walk on a busy traffic street and take notice of what he saw: the old and the young, the half-blind and the half-deaf, the half-drunk and the sober, the timid and inexperienced and confused, who get down town only once in six months, and the sophisticated down-town worker. If the legislator chose to propose a law which recognized the inequity of holding these nondescript pedestrians to the standard of the ordinary reasonable licensed automobile driver who sits in the safety of his vehicle and violates the law, is it for a court to frustrate this legislator’s experiment in humanity by looking far afield for reasons to nullify the statute?
The court says that the Uniform Motor Vehicle Act is better written in that it specifically provides that the pedestrian’s right of way on a highway shall not apply where there is a tunnel or an overhead pedestrian crossing. That is logical, but completely irrelevant. The Washington statute says that the contributory negligence doctrine shall not apply when the pedestrian passes in front of a stopped automobile behind which is an automobile which the law has ordered to stop but which may disregard the law.
The court says, in effect, that since there are several paragraphs of the statute which follow the sentence, “This provision shall not apply under the conditions stated hereinafter,” and since, as to some of those paragraphs, the language of the first paragraph would not be logically applicable anyway, therefore the non-applicability statement cannot be applied, even as to the immediately following paragraph as to which the non-applicability statement is completely logical. I think the court’s interpretation of the statute indicates a deplorable tendency to meddle in and frustrate the purpose of legislators. What seems to me plain enough is that, whatever the Uniform Motor Vehicle Act may have said, and meant by what it said, the Washington Legislature when it referred to “this provision” meant the “but no pedestrian, etc.” provision and nothing more, and that when it spoke of “the conditions stated hereinafter,” it meant the conditions stated first thereinafter. The statute *171should be so interpreted ut res valeat magis quam pereat. The numerous Washington eases cited by the court have nothing to do with this ease. Of course, a pedestrian may, in many situations, be barred from recovery by his contributory negligence. But the Washington courts have not had occasion to interpret and apply the statutory provisions upon which this case depends. In the case of Allen v. Hart, 32 Wash.2d 173, 201 P.2d 145, the court said:
“There are few rights of way known to the law that are as nearly absolute as that given a pedestrian on a crosswalk at an intersection where there are no traffic signals in place or in operation under the statute * * * and the city ordinance here applicable, both of which require the operator of a vehicle to yield the right of way to such pedestrians, ‘ * * * slowing down or stopping, if need be to so yield.’ ”
The case from which the foregoing quotation was taken did not involve the statute which is here under construction. I think it is particularly inappropriate for a federal court, in a suit against the federal Government, to so construe a state statute not yet construed by the courts of the state, as to violate the spirit and attitude which the courts of the state have shown toward related statutes.
On Petition for Rehearing En Banc
Before MADDEN, Judge of the Court of Claims, and BROWNING and DUNIWAY, Circuit Judges.
The petition for rehearing en banc is denied. The petition calls our attention to the case of Daley v. Stephens, 64 Wash.2d —, 394 P.2d 801, decided July 30, 1964, disapproving certain language in Rettig v. Coca-Cola Bottling Co., 22 Wash.2d 572, 156 P.2d 914 (1945). At most, Daley is relevant to the issue of Sgt. Craig’s negligence, which we assumed in Mrs. Dabol’s favor. See note 6, page 165.
MADDEN, J-, would grant the petition.