Court Opinion

ID: 9846207
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 03:36:53.767684+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:16:35.211599
License: Public Domain

Pannell, Judge,
concurring specially. I concur in the judgment but cannot concur with the ruling made in Division 3 of the opinion that the striking from an amendment to the defensive pleadings offered after the close of the evidence of the allegations that the mother’s "negligent failure to require her said infant daughter to use said seat belts was the sole proximate cause of whatever injury her said minor daughter may have sustained” was rendered harmless by a charge of the court to the jury "that if you find that the causation of the accident was the result of negligence— that the proximate cause of the accident was the negligence of” the mother "then in that event you would not be entitled to find for the daughter.” Paragraph 7 of the original answer contains the following allegation: "This defendant shows that the *10negligence as herein set forth of the said Mrs. Shelby Harrell [the mother and driver of the car in which the child was a passenger] was the sole, direct and proximate cause of the collision between the said two automobiles and whatever injury or damage was suffered by the said Mrs. Harrell or her husband or her said infant daughter, the other plaintiffs in said cause.” In my opinion, the charge referring to "accident” could very easily have been interpreted by the jury to mean, and in my opinion, could have no other meaning than, the collision of the two automobiles. If this be so, the charge in no way referred to the negligent lack of use of said seat belts and could not have cured the error, assuming it to have been error, in striking the pleadings referred to.
However, I concur in the judgment for the reason that I do not think it was error to strike that portion of the pleadings. While there seems to be a diversity of opinion as to whether the failure to use seat belts amounts to contributory negligence or such negligence as may reduce the damages upon the application of a comparative negligence rule (see Anno. 15 ALR3rd, p. 1428), we have no such question for decision in this case. What we have here is whether or not the alleged negligence of the mother in failing to require the 8-year-old child to use seat belts could, under the facts of this case, be the sole proximate cause of the child’s injuries. In my opinion, it could not. Failure to use seat belts does not alone cause collisions between automobiles or between automobiles and other objects, and one whose negligence causes such a collision cannot insulate himself against such negligence resulting in injury to a child, on the basis that the negligence of the mother of the child in failing to fasten seat belts was the sole proximate cause of the injuries received by the child. Under the evidence in this case the failure of the mother to require the child to use the seat belts is not the sole proximate cause of the injuries sustained by the child whether termed intervening or not. "In a situation where there is an act of negligence which is not operating and active at the time of another which follows, which latter act is caused by a breach of duty which the party guilty of the latter act of negligence owed to the injured party, the law will regard the latter act of negligence as the superseding cause, and will not look beyond it to the first act, unless the person guilty of the first act *11of negligence could reasonably have anticipated that the second or intervening act might, not improbably but in the natural and ordinary course of things, follow his act of negligence, or, 'if the misconduct is of such a character which, according to the usual experience of mankind, is calculated to invite or induce the intervention of some subsequent cause.’ 1 Cooley on Torts, 132, 135, §52; Restatement of the Law of Torts, 1199, §448; Southern R. Co. v. Webb, 116 Ga. 152 (42 SE 395, 59 LRA 109).” Bozeman v. Blue’s Truck Line, Inc., 62 Ga. App. 7 (7 SE2d 412).
I do not mean to intimate or express any opinion as to whether or not the act of the mother in failing to require the child to fasten its seat belt can be held negligent; nor do I mean to express any opinion that such act, if negligent, can or cannot be found by a jury to be a concurring cause of the injuries received by the child.