Court Opinion

ID: 9578459
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 21:45:25.802472+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:27:47.788650
License: Public Domain

Deen, Judge,
dissenting. I would concur in the judgment of the majority if this case represented an appeal from a jury verdict, but I am constrained to disagree with the result reached on motion for summary judgment, applying the test (Arrington v. Trammell, 83 Ga. App. 107 (62 SE2d 451)) that where reasonable minds may disagree on the quantum of negligence the issue is for the determination of the jury, not the court. My objections here are twofold:
1. We may not assume, as the majority opinion does, that the children "received permission from Edgar’s father to fish below the dam, with the admonition to be careful.” Edgar’s father, the defendant, testified by deposition that he did not "give them any words of caution about the falls or getting near them” although he had been to the place previously and knew its topography. He further stated that while he always told his son to be careful, he recalled giving no instructions on that day. The question of warning is therefore, at most, the subject of contradictory evidence which cannot be decided at this time.
2. The majority opinion assumes that this appeal is substantially analogous to and therefore controlled by Bourn v. Herring, 225 Ga. 67 (166 SE2d 89). Close reading of that case insofar as it deals with the negligence of the immediate custodians of the decedent is grounded absolutely on the legal presumption that a minor child over 14 years of age, where no lack of intelligence or capacity is shown, is *751chargeable with diligence for his own safety against a palpable and manifest peril. The peril in that case dealt with the danger of attempting to get from a raft in the middle of a lake back to the shore where the child does not know how to swim. The presumption of at least quasi-maturity at age 14 was indulged as to a peril so obvious that even a child should have recognized it.
We have no such presumption in this case in dealing with a child who has not yet reached his 13th birthday. "It may be that a person who has attained the age of fourteen years is presumptively charged with the same degree of care for his safety as an adult (Muscogee Mfg. Co. v. Butts, 21 Ga. App. 558 (94 SE 821)); but we can not say that this presumption should be applied to the decedent [12-year-old child] merely because the petition alleged in effect that he was an intelligent and unusually well-developed child.” Ragan v. Goddard, 43 Ga. App. 599, 602 (159 SE 743). "There is no presumption of law that a child between the ages of seven and fourteen did or did not exercise due care, or does or does not have sufficient capacity to recognize danger or to observe due care.” Brewer v. Gittings, 102 Ga. App. 367 (4) (116 SE2d 500).
When the Herring case was returned to this court after reversal it was held (Herring v. R. L. Mathis Certified Dairy Co., 121 Ga. App. 373 (4) (173 SE2d 716): "Under the ruling of the Supreme Court, plaintiff has no claim upon which relief can be granted in this case unless it were made to appear, (a) that plaintiff’s son was a child of less than ordinary intelligence and understanding for his age [over 14 years] at the time, or (b) that ... the church’s Sunday school superintendent was guilty of wilful misconduct which proximately caused the decedent’s drowning.” The superintendent in Herring, like the defendant here, was a temporary custodian of the decedent for recreational purposes. This court properly construed the Supreme Court pinion in the disjunctive: that is, for the parent to recover under the theory of ordinary negligence it must be shown that the child was either under the age of fourteen or had *752some mental or physical incapacity, since otherwise he would be responsible for his own actions under these circumstances, or if he was so responsible, then wilful negligence would have to be proved. But a child of twelve is not to be presumed responsible in this sense, so the question of whether the negligence, if it existed, was wilful does not arise.
Regrettable as this occasion was, in my mind it remains for the jury and the jury alone to decide whether it is negligence to allow a 12-year-old boy to go off with another child, at least without particularly cautioning him at the time, to an area known to be unfenced, unwatched, precipitous, rocky and overlooking swiftly moving water. It is common knowledge that children have an almost universal attraction for the edges of high places. They have an almost irresistable urge to throw stones and rocks into falls and ravines. And rocks overlooking such areas are more often than not treacherously wet and slick, a fact that children raised in cities too often forget.
Nor do I see any estoppel to insist on this alleged negligence. The fact was that the parents did not give permission to the child or the defendant to go on this trip. The fact that when they learned of it after he had left and made no protest is irrelevant. The fact that the maid, an employee with whom he had been left, allowed him to go is of no consequence so far as the plaintiff is concerned. The issue simply is, construing all these facts in favor of the plaintiff against the motion for summary judgment, whether a jury should pass on the question of whether the defendant exercised that degree of care toward the decedent, either in letting him go below the falls alone with another child or in failing to give cautionary instructions, which an ordinarily prudent person would exercise toward a 12 or 13-year-old child. I think reasonable minds might disagree on this subject, and that it was therefore error to grant the motion for summary judgment.
I am authorized to state that Judges Pannell, Quillian and Evans concur in this dissent.