Court Opinion

ID: 9740316
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 20:32:20.894266+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:17.416812
License: Public Domain

BAKER, Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part
While I fully concur with the majority’s holding that section 10 of the Tort Claims Act provides immunity for the State’s issuance of the permit, I cannot agree with its finding that there is a genuine question of fact as to whether the design, construction or maintenance of the intersection was the proximate cause of the plaintiffs’ injuries. In my view, the proximate cause of the plaintiffs’ injuries was the semi driver’s intentional act of blowing through the stop sign and crossing the highway at a rate of approximately fifty miles per hour. As a matter of law, I believe that such recklessness was not a natural and probable consequence of the intersection’s design. See City of Portage v. Lindbloom, 655 N.E.2d 84, 86 (Ind.Ct.App.1995) (“A negligent act or omission is the proximate cause of an injury if the injury is a natural and probable consequence which, in light of the circumstances, should reasonably have been foreseen or anticipated.”), trans. denied. Specifically, I note that the plaintiffs conceded at oral argument that coming to a complete stop, as required by any stop sign, would not prevent a semi driver from traversing Shiloh Hill but would only cause an exceedingly slow ascent. Despite the tediousness of the climb, the defendants could not have reasonably foreseen that a semi driver would choose to risk lives in order to reach the top faster. To find a question of fact in the instant case would only lend support to the oft-quoted passage from Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist: “If the law supposes that ... the law is a ass, a idiot.” I do not believe the law to be such and, thus, would find as a matter of law that the driver’s act proximately caused this tragedy.