Court Opinion

ID: 9586454
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 23:11:17.336738+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:31:42.856635
License: Public Domain

Frankum, Judge,
dissenting in part. I dissent from that portion of Division 1 of the majority opinion which holds that special ground 3 of the amended motion for a new trial does not show harmful or reversible error and from the judgment of affirmance. The portion of the charge excepted to in ground 3 was clearly a misstatement of the defendant’s contentions. In his answer, after denying the material allegations of the plain*509tiff’s petition, the defendant alleged four defensive contentions: first, that the plaintiff’s injuries resulted solely from her own failure to exercise ordinary care; second, that if the plaintiff had exercised ordinary care, she could have avoided the consequences of his negligence, if any; third, that the plaintiff’s negligence was equal to or greater than the negligence of the defendant, if any; and finally, that he was not negligent in any of-the particulars claimed in the plaintiff’s petition. Nowhere did he concede in his pleadings or in his evidence that he was negligent in a degree greater than the plaintiff was, or that the jury would be authorized to find that he was guilty of such negligence as to create Some liability to the plaintiff on his part. It is true that in his pleadings, as set forth above, he did invoke the application of the comparative negligence rule, but the court was not, in the portion of the charge assigned as error in this ground of the motion, charging the law with respect to comparative negligence but was stating the contentions of the defendant. The defendant was entitled to have his contentions correctly stated and to have the case tried upon the defenses which he elected to assert, and he should not, by the charge of the court, have been placed in the attitude of making a contention which he did not make and thus placed in an incorrect and unfavorable position which probably tended to discredit his position as to the' contentions which he did make. Under the rulings in Southern R. Co. v. Thompson, 129 Ga. 367, 368 (1) (58 SE 1044), Smith v. Sherwood, 55 Ga. App. 395, 396 (4) (190 SE 205), Ergle v. Davidson, 69 Ga. App. 102 (24 SE2d 810), and McJenkin Ins. &c. Co. v. Thompson, 79 Ga. App. 473, 475 (54 SE2d 336), this proposition was directly applicable under the facts of this case to .the charge complained of in special ground 3. I do not think that the jury could have understood this portion of the charge as saying to •them anything other than that the defendant had conceded that the evidence authorized them to find against him in some amount, and since he did not make this concession, the charge was necessarily harmful to him. I think that the assignment of error contained in the motion for a new trial sufficiently raises this point, and that the contentions of the plaintiff in error which clearly raise this point ought not to be rejected on purely technical grounds as held in the special concurrence of Chief Judge Felton.
*510I am authorized to say that Presiding Judge Bell and Judges Eberhardt and Pannell concur in this dissent.