Court Opinion

ID: 9671326
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 03:34:36.643828+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:09.308088
License: Public Domain

Beilfuss, J.
(dissenting). I do not disagree with the concept that a person whose work or activity requires or justifies “preoccupation” is entitled to the benefit of a rule requiring a lesser degree of care than is required by an ordinary prudent person. Nor do I think that a fireman, volunteer or otherwise, is not entitled to such a rule in most instances.
Whether a fireman or other individual is entitled to the rule of a lesser degree of care must be dependent upon the existent circumstance. Here I agree with the trial judge, who was in a much better position to appraise the circumstances than all or any of the members of this court, that there was not “any terrible immediate excitement of fighting a fire.”
The plaintiff, Mr. Knutter, was responding to a fire call, a grass fire. When he arrived in the area where the fire was reported he saw no fire, did not know where the fire was, stopped and crossed a busy state highway to inquire of a woman where the fire was; she did not know, and he was crossing the highway again at a place where *764pedestrians are required to yield the right-of-way and where any adequate lookout would have revealed the presence of the oncoming vehicle.
At the time he was struck he was not fighting a fire, he was not going to a fire, there is no evidence he was even looking for the fire at that instant, — he was only crossing the highway to go back to the car in which he had been riding. At the time he was struck there was not such a justifiable preoccupation as would entitle him to use a lesser degree of care for his own safety.
If the majority is correct, what rule applies to a plainclothes police officer under similar circumstances, a doctor who is responding to an emergency call, a husband or father who is taking a sick wife or child to a hospital, or even a lawyer who is going to the courthouse to make his final argument to the jury in a capital case (at least his client would believe his lawyer’s preoccupation would be justified) ?
It is my opinion that the trial court did not err in refusing to give a jury instruction on a lesser degree of care under the facts of this case. I would affirm.
I am authorized to state that Mr. Justice Leo B. Han-ley and Mr. Justice Connor T. Hansen join in this dissent.