Court Opinion

ID: 9825999
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 15:10:29.248195+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:41:45.982030
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Fraser:
I must dissent from the opinion of Mr. Justice Marion on two points.
*4931. I think the trial Judge erred in charging the jury that the measure of damages for the loss of the use of the plaintiff’s car was the rental value of another car of similar make, during the time he was deprived of his car for a reasonable time. To my mind there is a great difference in the loss of the use of a car by different men. For instance: One man has a car that he uses only for the purpose of going to and from his place of business. Another man has constant use for his car and must have it at hand at all times. The first man can hire a public hack for 25 cents each way. His loss is 50 cents a day. The other man must rent a car for a day at a time at a rental, say, of $5 per day. One man has lost, by the injury to his car, 50 cents a day, and the other man has lost $5 per day. The purpose of damages is to save a man from loss, and, as the loss is not the same, the damages should not be the same.
The case of Lester v. Fox Film Corporation, 114 S. C., 533; 104 S. E., 178, and the cases therein cited, are not in point. In that case the question was not what the plaintiff should have to pay for another film, but the loss of profits.
2. I think there should have been a directed verdict. The defendant is held for damages solely because she violated the city ordinance and her conduct was negligence per se. The plaintiff admits that he also violated the city ordinance, and as a matter of law he also was guilty of negligence per se. Now “contributory negligence to any extent will always defeat a. recovery.” Cooper v. Ry. Co., 56 S. C., 95; 34 S. E., 17. That is the law in this State. It is a natural law that the penetrating power of a projectile is increased by an increase of speed. The jury might as well have made a finding that ignores the law of gravitation. It is a matter of natural law that the unlawful speed increased the injury. It is a matter of state law that the plaintiff was guilty of negligence in his unlawful speed and a matter of natural law that it contributed to the injury. Of course it was for the jury to say whether it was negligence or not for a man, *494whose eyesight was not good, to ride with dim lights on his machine, upon a poorly lighted street, but they had no right to find that his driving at an unlawful rate of speed did not thereby contribute to his injury, and contributory negligence to any extent defeats recovery. To be specific, an automobile running at 18 miles an hour, if it comes into collision with another car, will do and receive more injury than if it were running 15 miles an hour. That the plaintiff was guilty of negligence is admitted. That the negligence contributed to the injury cannot be denied.
For these reasons I dissent.