Court Opinion

ID: 9602364
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 01:53:38.144744+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:02:03.004060
License: Public Domain

*209Beasley, Judge,
concurring specially.
I agree fully with Divisions 2 and 3 of the majority opinion and with Presiding Judge Birdsong’s special concurrence, except that I cannot agree with him in all that the majority says in Division 1.
I am in accord with construing the statutory language as meaning that “struck by the owner’s motor vehicle” embraces more than instances of actual physical contact between the vehicle and the pedestrian. However, I am troubled by the broad notion that coverage would extend whenever the vehicle “set in motion a chain of events leading up to” the striking of the pedestrian. A chain of events could include intervening happenings brought about by other persons’ acts or by natural occurrences, which would weaken or remove the proximate cause element. So, for example, the insured vehicle might strike another vehicle, and the driver of that vehicle reacts negligently so as to cause injury to a pedestrian.
But when an insured vehicle strikes an object and makes of it a projectile which hits a pedestrian because of the energy and direction infused into it by the striking vehicle, it can be concluded logically that the pedestrian was struck by the insured vehicle, in the contemplation of the statute. It is the relationship between the vehicle and the pedestrian that is crucial. When they are connected by an object which strikes the pedestrian because of the action of the vehicle, the insured would be liable. That would be true whether the object was a stone or another vehicle. That is what occurred here. I would go no farther in this case.
I am authorized to state that Presiding Judge Deen joins in this special concurrence.