Court Opinion

ID: 9584443
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 22:48:20.289848+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:07:51.641774
License: Public Domain

WOLFE, Justice.
I concur. My main concern, also, is with the first paragraph of Instruction #7 reading: “You are instructed that where one may perform a duty in either of two ways, one safe and the other dangerous, and with full knowledge that one method of performing the duty is safe and the other dangerous and with full opportunity to make a choice as to which method he shall adopt, voluntarily chooses the dangerous method, such conduct on his part constitutes negligence.”
This instruction suffers not only from a poor choice of words, but from a wrong concept.
Certainly it would have required prescience on the part of Marshall to know that to remain standing in his posh *168tion would subject him to the sweep of the handle of the truck which was stationary and which was “cornered” by the moving truck. It did not involve a dangerous situation. “Peril”, “hazard”, “danger”, jeopardy”, “risk”, and “unsafe” are words connotating situations containing intrinsically various degrees of potentiality for harm. Certainly here there was nothing intrinsically dangerous in the situation. But Marshalls position was unsafe measured by the events which subsequently happened. Many innocent situations would be dangerous from that test. Almost any situation where a chain of events produced an injury might be judged to have been dangerous in view of what happened. At least hindsight might so demonstrate.
But in the manifested judgment of the driver of the jitney, there was a risk in Marshall’s remaining at his station but it could have been only the risk attendant on the driver’s traverse of a narrow place but certainly not of the accident in the manner in which it actually happened. For if the jitney driver knew it was going to happen he presumably would not have attempted to negotiate the passage. Assuming that the jury did not give the word “dangerous” in the instruction the meaning of “some contingent evil in prospect”, but interpreted the instruction to mean that Marshall was warned that there was an unsafeness about his position which could have been eliminated had he changed that position, but that he chose to take the chance, and was consequently injured, the instruction embodies a wrong concept. This is succinctly stated in the opinion of Mr. Justice LATIMER as follows: “The test to determine plaintiff’s conduct is not whether there were safer places which could have been selected by him, but rather whether or not under the facts and circumstances known to him he acted as a reasonably prudent person.”
Therefore, I agree that Instruction # 7 was prejudicial because the measure of the duty imposed on the plaintiff was not that required by the law.