Court Opinion

ID: 9849372
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 04:39:07.54153+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:19:20.765681
License: Public Domain

Banke, Judge,
concurring specially.
1. The appellate courts of Georgia have long held that questions of negligence are peculiarly matters for the jury, not the court, to resolve, except in clear, plain, palpable and indisputed cases. The reason why such matters are peculiarly for the jury is because what is negligence to one person may not be negligence to another. That is why we need the enlightened consciences and experience of 12 jurors to determine what is or is not negligence.
2. I also find a fact issue in this case because the appellant was only 14 years of age at the time of the auto-bicycle collision. Motorists owe children a greater duty than they owe adults. It goes without saying that a child simply does not exercise the same degree of care for his safety as an adult would under similar circumstances. Furthermore, children can be expected to make sudden and erratic movements more often than adults. See generally Hieber v. Watt, 119 Ga. App. 5 (165 SE2d 899) (1969) and Kennedy v. Banks, 119 Ga. App. 831 (169 SE2d 180) (1969).
When the appellee first saw the appellant 200 yards away, traveling toward him in appellee’s own lane of traffic, should he have continued at his same speed, slowed down, or realizing that a very confused person was riding a bicycle in the wrong lane, pulled off to the side of the road? Should he have maintained his position close to the middle line when he saw the bicyclist to be a child, or should he have pulled over to the right side as far as his lane of traffic would permit? Such questions are best resolved by a jury.