Court Opinion

ID: 9586951
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 23:16:48.590548+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:32:57.359491
License: Public Domain

Judge Phillips
dissenting.
Even though the time that defendant had within which to avoid the accident was very brief, indeed, and the distance between the two vehicles was rather short, the evidence nevertheless raised the issue of last clear chance, in my opinion, and the jury should have been so instructed.
The evidence as to virtually every circumstance leading to the accident was in conflict, and how these conflicts were resolved by the jury, we do not know. They could have found, however, as one evidentiary combination indicates, that instead of traveling 20 miles per hour, the defendant was just getting his car in motion, after stopping for the red light, when he could have seen that plaintiff, traveling 30 to 35 miles per hour, was not going to stop for the changing traffic light. Whether the defendant *487could and should have stopped his car, rather than increase his speed and travel on, was a question that the jury should have decided, rather than the court. That a car just leaving a stationary position requires very little time and space within which to stop is certain, and in determining that under the circumstances described that defendant had no reasonable opportunity to stop his car and that the chance that defendant undoubtedly had to avoid the accident was only a “last possible chance,” rather than a last clear chance, the majority decided a factual, rather than a legal, question in my judgment. While this is a weak last clear chance case, to be sure, based on circumstances drastically different from those involved in most of the reported cases that have dealt with this doctrine, it is still a case for the jury, in my view. Too, despite the refinements that judges have engrafted upon this simple, humane, common sense doctrine, it should be remembered that it is but an extension of the rule of proximate cause, which jurors, rather than judges, usually apply; and, if defendant could and should have avoided the accident in the brief time available after plaintiffs peril was or should have been noted, his failure to do so was the proximate cause of plaintiffs damage. If the jury had been so instructed, the verdict might have been different.