Court Opinion

ID: 9883753
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-10-06 02:15:34.741601+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:48:30.087991
License: Public Domain

PARKER, Judge
(dissenting).
I join Judge Forsberg in his dissent. I would not make mandatory an instruction, approved as permissive, which so deviates from the principles of negligence law. To excuse from liability acts which would otherwise be negligent because those acts were in furtherance of an “honest error in judgment” would excuse a vast array of tortfeasors if applied across the board. Most vehicle drivers found liable for negligence have committed mere “honest errors of judgment,” such as misjudging the speed of an oncoming vehicle or the light patterns of a semaphore.
The question is, why is such an excuse, when asserted in defense of professional negligence, given such an exalted status as to be a required instruction to the jury? The answer seems to me to be that this court today requires that something more than mere negligence be shown before a jury will be allowed to find professional negligence. If that is to be the law, that practitioners are to be accorded special protection from suits charging professional negligence, it should be the legislature’s province, and the court’s function should be limited to seeing that equal protection of the laws is observed.