Court Opinion

ID: 9613491
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 04:17:32.224667+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:03:29.453317
License: Public Domain

Worrill, J.,
dissenting. I dissent from the majority opinion and judgment of affirmance for the reasons hereinafter stated. I recognize the general rule- that questions of negligence, diligence, cause and proximate cause, and also of gross negligence *675and slight diligence are ordinarily questions for the jury, and that such questions will not be decided by this court on appeal except in plain, palpable, and indisputable cases. However, I think that this is such a plain and indisputable case. That the plaintiff’s wife rode in the defendant’s automobile as a guest within the meaning of our law, and that, as such, the plaintiff must show gross negligence on the part of the defendant’s wife (the driver of the automobile) before he can recover for the injuries to his wife, is recognized by both the plaintiff and the defendant. See Epps v. Parrish, 26 Ga. App. 399 (106 S. E. 297). Conversely, such being the facts and the law, the defendant’s wife was bound to exercise only slight diligence with respect to the plaintiff’s wife. Slight diligence is defined as “that degree of care which eveiy man of common sense, howsoever inattentive he may be, exercises under the same or similar circumstances. . . The absence of such care is termed gross negligence.” Code, § 105-203.
The facts in this case show simply that the defendant’s wife, while driving her automobile along a straight paved highway in clear weather at a speed of 45 or 50 miles per hour, momentarily took her eyes from the road in order to slap her small son on the leg for misbehavior; that at the most she looked away from the road for two seconds, during which time the car traveled perhaps 150 feet, and that she ran off the paved portion of the road to the right, and in attempting to get the automobile back onto the road she lost control and ran off the road to the left, the automobile turning over three times and injuring the plaintiff’s wife. The only act of negligence complained of which immediately preceded the injury, and which could have had any causal connection with it, was the defendant’s wife’s action in momentarily taking her eyes from the road while driving at 50 miles per hour.
In Tucker v. Andrews, 51 Ga. App. 841, 845 (181 S. E. 673), on motion for rehearing, Judge MacIntyre, in further defining the term “gross negligence,” said, quoting from Shaw v. Moore, 104 Vt. 529 (162 Atl. 373): “ ‘Gross negligence is equivalent to the failure to exercise even a slight degree of care. It is materially more want of care than constitutes simple inadver-' tence. It is an act or omission respecting legal duty of an *676aggravated character as distinguished from a mere failure to exercise ordinary care. It is very great negligence, or the absence of slight diligence, or the want of even scant care. It amounts to indifference to present legal duty, and to utter forgetfulness of legal obligations so far as other persons may be affected. It is a heedless and palpable violation of legal duty respecting the rights of others. The element of culpability which characterizes all negligence is, in gross negligence, magnified to a high degree as compared with that present in ordinary negligence. Gross negligence is manifestly a smaller amount of watchfulness and circumspection than the circumstances require of a prudent man. But, it falls short of being such reckless disregard of probable consequences as is equivalent to a wilful and. intentional wrong. Ordinary and gross negligence differ in degree of inattention, while both differ in kind from wilful and intentional conduct which is or ought to be known to have a tendency to injure.’ ” And further, in quoting from Anderson v. Olson, (Vt.) 169 Atl. 781, Judge MacIntyre said: " 'Automobile driver’s mere error in judgment, momentary inattention, or loss of presence of mind, does not indicate such indifference to duty owed guests or forgetfulness of latter’s safety as to authorize guest’s recovery for the resulting injuries on the ground of gross negligence. . . There must be something more than an error in judgment, momentary inattention, or loss of presence of mind, in circumstances such as these, in order that there may be indicated an indifference to the duty owed to a guest or an utter forgetfulness of his safety.’ ”
In Capers v. Martin, 54 Ga. App. 555 (188 S. E. 465), it was held that there is an exception to the general rule that it is for the jury to say whether the driver of an automobile is grossly negligent in failing to keep a constant lookout ahead, where the driver in looking aside or away from the road does so in response to some sudden, natural, human impulse or emergency, with only momentary or very brief turning of the head backward or aside. This exception seems to have been recognized and applied in Harris v. Reid, 30 Ga. App. 187 (117 S. E. 256), where the defendant, in passing an automobile on the highway, scraped fenders, and upon being admonished by the plaintiff from the rear seat to “look out” turned her head, and while it *677was so turned ran the automobile off the road into a ditch, injuring the plaintiff; and in Tucker v. Andrews, supra, where the defendant was driving her automobile at not less than 25 miles per hour with the plaintiff on the front seat and her two children on the back seat when, after passing over a bridge, she was informed by one of the children that a bottle of milk on the floor in the rear had turned over, she looked back for 3 or 4 seconds and the automobile collided with a telegraph pole on the side of the road, injuring the plaintiff. In all three of these cases this court held in effect that the mere turning of the head and eyes from the road, particularly where done in response to a natural human impulse or emergency, was not gross negligence, so as to authorize, on that ground alone, a finding that the defendant was grossly negligent.
I think that the facts of this case place it squarely within the stated exception; that the defendant’s wife’s action in taking her eyes from the road to punish her child whose actions manifestly were annoying her and hindering her safe handling of the automobile, and where no danger of-collision was shown, was a natural human impulse or reaction to the conduct of her child, a mere error in judgment or momentary inattention on her part; that there was no act or omission respecting a legal duty on her part of an “aggravated character”; and that as a matter of law she was not guilty of the want of even scant care or guilty of an utter forgetfulness of her legal obligations to the plaintiff’s wife; in short, that she was, as a matter of law, not shown to have been guilty of gross negligence proximately causing the injuries to the plaintiff’s wife. Under these circumstances, the evidence did not authorize the verdict and the trial court erred in overruling the motion for a new trial.
This is not to say that the petition did not allege a cause of action. That question is not properly before this court upon the consideration of the general grounds of the motion for new trial. Mayor &c. of Griffin v. Johnson, 84 Ga. 279 (6) (10 S. E. 719); Twilley v. Twilley, 195 Ga. 291 (1) (24 S. E. 2d, 41); Gunn v. Johnson & Co., 29 Ga. App. 610 (1) (116 S. E. 921). However, it is a far cry from the driver’s diverting her attention from the road long enough to give her child a spanking (as alleged in the petition) to a mere glance away from the road *678of not more than two seconds to fix in her mind the location of her child’s leg so as to administer a slap, which slap was never in fact administered (as was shown by the evidence). The plaintiff did not prove his case as laid in the petition.
Felton, J., concurs in the foregoing dissent.