Court Opinion

ID: 9631278
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 10:33:27.607676+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:28:56.471110
License: Public Domain

Dissenting Opinion by
Mb. Justice Allen M. Steabne:
The accident which gave rise to the present case occurred in the State of Ohio. Dr. Paul Staman and his wife were driving in their automobile from a medical convention in Chicago to their home in Uniontown, Pennsylvania. While they were enroute through Ohio, their automobile collided with a truck, and both were instantly killed. The present suit is by the administrator of the wife’s estate, on behalf of two surviving children, against the husband’s executor.
Our Pennsylvania cases recognize the rule that the law of the state where the accident occurred governs the rights of the parties: Mackey v. Robertson, 328 Pa. 504, 506, 195 A. 870; Foley, Executrix, v. The Pittsburgh-Des Moines Company, 363 Pa. 1, 9, 68 A. 2d 517. As the law of the State of Ohio governs, it is for the *12Pennsylvania courts to follow the law as pronounced in the sister state. It is conceded that the wife was a guest in the husband’s car and that the Ohio Guest Statute (4A, Page, Ohio General Code Annotated, Sec. 6308-6) precludes recovery by her administrator unless the husband was guilty of wilful and wanton misconduct.
Under the Ohio cases, in my opinion, there was not sufficient evidence for submission to a jury of “wilful and wanton misconduct”. It is for this reason that I dissent.
It is true, as said by the majority, that “Whether or not the evidence as a whole was sufficient to take the ease to the jury on the indicated issue is to be determined by .the lew fori”. But this does not in any sense detract from the force of the rule that the forum must look to the lew loci delicti to determine the standard by which the actor’s conduct is to be judged. The comment to the Restatement section cited by the majority (Conflict of Laws, sec. 595) reads in part as follows: “If, however, by the law of the place where the acts are done, the application of a standard of conduct has been narrowed, either by judicial decision or by statute, into a rule of law, the court at the forum will apply the rule so established to the facts as proved.” It is indisputable, therefore, that Ohio case law governs the instant case.
The majority likewise recognizes that “The requirement of culpable knowledge on the part of the driver is clear . . .”, and quotes a brief excerpt from Tighe v. Diamond, 149 Ohio St. 520, 527, 80 N. E. 2d 122. The full statement of the Ohio court was: “ ‘Wilful misconduct’ on the part of a motorist, within the contemplation of guest statutes similar to the Ohio guest statute, is either the doing of an act with specific intent to injure his passenger, or, with full knowledge of exist*13ing conditions, the intentional execution of a •wrongful course of conduct which he knows should not be carried out or the intentional failure to do something which he knows should be done in connection with his operation of the automobile, under circumstances tending to disclose that the motorist knows or should know that an injury to his guest will be the probable result of such conduct.” (italics supplied) It is upon the question of whether or not this and numerous similar statements of the Ohio courts mean that the culpable knowledge must be actual knowledge of existing conditions that I differ with the majority. In the above-quoted case, there was evidence that the defendant driver “had full knowledge of the road conditions on the highway”. The driver himself “testified that his objective was to take the girls over the hump and give them a thrill; and that he intended to go over it at a rate of speed which would throw the car up in the air somewhat.” In the only other Ohio case cited by the majority (Jenkins v. Sharp, 140 Ohio St. 80, 42 N. E. 2d 755), the court found that “there is evidence . . . that a defendant in operating his automobile approaches a dangerous highway crossing, along which his view is obstructed, and, with conscious and timely knowledge of the existence of a stop signal [to which defendant himself testified], marking the intersecting highway as a main thoroughfare, drives on at a high and dangerous speed and in disregard of the injunction to stop. . . .” The instant case includes no direct evidence of any kind as to what the deceased driver actually knew.
In understanding the importance attached by the Ohio courts to “full knowledge of existing conditions”, further excerpts from Tighe v. Diamond, supra, may be helpful: “As long as the element of inadvertence remains in conduct it is not wilful.... Negligence and wilfulness are mutually exclusive terms, implying radi*14cally different mental states. . . . ‘Wilful misconduct’ is something more than negligence. ‘Wilful misconduct’ imports a more positive mental condition prompting an act than does the term ‘wanton misconduct.’ ‘Wilful misconduct’ implies an intentional deviation from a clear duty or' from a definite rule of conduct, a deliberate purpose not to discharge some duty necessary to safety, or purposely doing wrongful acts with knowledge or appreciation of the likelihood of resulting injury.”
In the light of these pronouncements of the Ohio court, it is meaningless to speak of circumstances which disclose what a driver should have known unless it is proved that such driver had actual knowledge of those circumstances. Nevertheless, the majority opinion, while conceding that speed alone does not prove wilful and wanton misconduct, states that “the excessive speed of the driver of the automobile in the instant case takes on material significance when considered in connection with other attendant factors such as the sharp curve at the foot of the descending grade, the wet condition of the relatively narrow brick roadway, the presence of the truck descending the opposite hill to the same curve and the force with which the Staman car must have crashed into the truck as evidenced by the photograph.” The force of the crash is obviously not an attendant circumstance at all but merely another way of saying that the relative speed of the two vehicles was very great. What evidence is there that the deceased driver had full knowledge of the other conditions mentioned? There is not a word in the record to indicate that he knew of “the sharp curve at the foot of the descending grade”. There is not even a suggestion that he was aware of “the presence of the truck descending the opposite hill to the same curve”. Indeed the very careful driver of the' truck, who proceeded at the modest *15speed of twenty-five miles per hour, said twice during the course of his testimony that he had the Staman car in view only a “very few seconds”. He did not see it at all until “just after he made the curve.” It is entirely possible that the deceased driver never saw the truck until the same moment, viz.: “after he made the curve”. There is nothing in the record to negative such a possibility.
Therefore, this record establishes only that the deceased driver had knowledge of these circumstances: he was driving at an excessive rate of speed on a wet, slippery road down a slight grade. In my judgment, the Ohio courts have clearly decided that such driving it not wilful and wanton misconduct. Cf. Schulz v. Fible, 71 Ohio App. 353, 48 N. E. 2d 899; Rupright v. Burns, 52 O. L. A. 129, 82 N. E. 2d 330; Helleren v. Dixon, 152 Ohio St. 40, 86 N. E. 2d 777. It is axiomatic that our only function is to apply the law thus announced to the instant facts; we have no concern with the wisdom of the Ohio statute or the propriety of the decisions construing it.
For these reason, I would reverse the order of the learned court below and enter judgment for defendant non obstante veredicto.
Mr. Justice Bell joins in this dissent.