Court Opinion

ID: 9583964
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 22:43:22.739053+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:06:12.657100
License: Public Domain

Deen, Presiding Judge,
concurring specially.
“When a child wakes up in the morning in his father’s house, the duty of providing a safe playground for him during the day rests upon his parents.” Savannah F. & W. R. Co. v. Beavers, 113 Ga. 398, 404 (39 SE 82) (1901). “It would normally be the duty of a parent or other adult to see to it that a child would not be going into a place of obvious danger.” Wright v. Shoney’s of Savannah, 141 Ga. App. 362 (233 SE2d 474) (1977).
George R. Lane & Associates v. Thomasson, 156 Ga. App. 313, 315 (274 SE2d 708) (1980) held that the father “... was negligent as to the care and control of the child in his custody.”
In the case sub judice the infant and his father were visiting in the neighborhood. The parents have the primary responsibility of rearing, educating and safeguarding the child. To hold otherwise herein would be imposition of a societal, environmental, collectivist product liability type responsibility on every homeowner possessing a slide and swimming pool in his backyard as an insurer. The facts in this case should not be equated with keeping a loaded pistol in the top drawer of a child-size three to four-foot chest in the playroom of a residence, Glean v. Smith, 116 Ga. App. 111 (156 SE2d 507) (1967); nor does it involve a landowner in a residential area who allows members of a family to plant a garden on its land, acquiesces in children playing there, who dug 14-foot temporary pits which filled with muddy, mucky, viscous matter, and who failed to reduce the danger to children after being notified there, Montega Corp. v. Grooms, 128 Ga. App. 333 (196 SE2d 459) (1973); nor does it involve the negligence, if any, of a temporary custodian of an infant decedent, Laite v. Baxter, 126 Ga. App. 743 (191 SE2d 531) (1972).
We must affirm. I am authorized to state that Presiding Judge Shulman and Judge Birdsong and Judge Sognier concur in this special concurrence.