Clanton v. Gwinnett County School District

464 S.E.2d 918, 219 Ga. App. 343, 96 Fulton County D. Rep. 95, 1995 Ga. App. LEXIS 1031
CourtCourt of Appeals of Georgia
DecidedDecember 5, 1995
DocketA95A1411
StatusPublished
Cited by3 cases

This text of 464 S.E.2d 918 (Clanton v. Gwinnett County School District) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Georgia primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Clanton v. Gwinnett County School District, 464 S.E.2d 918, 219 Ga. App. 343, 96 Fulton County D. Rep. 95, 1995 Ga. App. LEXIS 1031 (Ga. Ct. App. 1995).

Opinions

Beasley, Chief Judge.

Jimmy Clanton III, by and through his parents, sued the Gwinnett County School District and Jo Ann Rosselle alleging that as a result of their negligence Jimmy was injured. The incident occurred when Jimmy, who was five years and ten and one-half months old, was being supervised by Ms. Rosselle in a kindergarten class at a school in Gwinnett. Part of the planned activities for the kindergarten class was candlemaking. According to the Clantons, Jimmy tripped on the electric cord of a hot plate, caused boiling water to spill, and suffered first and second degree burns. A jury returned a defendants’ verdict.

1. In four enumerations of error, the Clantons claim that the trial court erred in failing to charge the jury upon request that a child under six years old is presumed incapable of contributory negligence; that the court erred in charging the jury regarding contributory and comparative negligence; and that the court erred in denying their mo[344]*344tion for a directed verdict on the issue of contributory negligence.1

(a) First we note that appellants’ separate enumerations of error, filed in accordance with Court of Appeals Rule 22, state five enumerations. Their brief, however, in the part set out as specified in Rule 27 (a) (2), lists only four. But there are five sections in the brief, corresponding to the five enumerations in the separate document. The Court should not be called upon to decipher the structure of parties’ submissions so as to match items up. Such sidetracks consume limited time better spent on the substantive issues.

(b) Second, it is notable that plaintiffs did not properly object to the court instructing the jury on the law as set out in OCGA § 51-1-5, which the court did verbatim. Actually, there was a discussion of it at the pretrial conference, plaintiffs taking the position that it applied only to children between the ages of six and fourteen. Earlier in the conference, plaintiffs had substantially offered it as a substitute for part of defendant’s Request to Charge No. 15, which the court accepted by striking the objectionable part of the request and giving OCGA § 51-1-5. When asked for exceptions after the charge was given, plaintiffs did not mention the recitation of OCGA § 51-1-5. Thus the jury had the statutory principle, without objection, as an instruction for their deliberations in measuring the child’s conduct.

And that is as it should have been. The trial court did not err but rather followed the mandate given by the Georgia Supreme Court in Ashbaugh v. Trotter, 237 Ga. 46 (226 SE2d 736) (1976), which governs the issue adversely to appellants. It construes and applies the statute which is now designated OCGA § 51-1-5.

The Court, neither in that case nor in any other Georgia case that we have read, had for consideration any expert opinion on child capacities so as to allow a reasoned cut-off age of six to be judicially established for negligence. Absent such, the question is properly left to the jury, which can size up all the particular evidence in the case and bring its collective common knowledge of children’s capacities to bear in determining first, whether the child was capable of negligence in the premises and second, whether the child was negligent. Hilburn v. Hilburn, 163 Ga. 23 (3) (135 SE 427) (1926); American Oil Co. v. Floyd, 136 Ga. App. 804, 805 (3) (222 SE2d 208) (1975). See, as related in theory, OCGA § 24-1-1 (6) (1975). This sensible attitude underlying the Supreme Court’s opinion in Ashbaugh comports more with justice than does the pronouncement of an arbitrary age, on one side of which a child is held responsible for behavior, regardless of what it relates to, and on the other side of which no legal responsibil[345]*345ity attaches.

In this instance the kindergarten child lacked his sixth birthday by less than one and one-half months. He was bright, in that in the approximately four years between the incident and the trial, he had earned all A’s at school except for one B. When he fell over the cord, he was returning to the area where the children played housekeeping. He had gone to the teacher, apparently with the toy truck he had been playing with, to report that there were too many children in housekeeping, and she had told him what to do about it, to tell everybody to get out. The cord over which he tripped was on the floor. It was up to the jury to find whether this child of tender years exercised “such care as [his] mental and physical capacities enable[d] him to exercise in the actual circumstances of [this] occasion and situation. . . .” OCGA § 51-1-5.

In Ashbaugh, the child was four and one-half months older than Jimmy Clanton, and the Supreme Court gave no indication whatsoever that the Code section would not control if the child was under age six. It did not regard as controlling Red Top Cab Co. v. Cochran, 100 Ga. App. 707 (112 SE2d 229) (1959), but rather declined to follow it because it did not even mention the Code section. Red Top is one of the two cases relied on by appellants here in requesting a charge on conclusive presumption. Instead, the Court in Ashbaugh held, “the plain language of the Code section must be applied . . . the question of the infant’s alleged negligence is one for the jury in this case under appropriate instructions from the tried court.” Ashbaugh, supra at 47. The Court had undertaken a nationwide search and found this to be “the widely held view,” specifically reciting the Restatement of Torts 2d, § 283A. Neither the statute nor the Restatement gives an automatic age cut-off, recognizing that children naturally mature and develop their faculties and capacities at different speeds and ages.

As Bleckley, C. J., wrote for the Court in Western & Atlantic R. Co. v. Young, 81 Ga. 397, 416 (2) (7 SE 912) (1888), concerning the standard of due care applicable to children: “Capacity (which includes personal experience as well as natural gifts) is the main thing. Age is of no significance except as a mark or sign of capacity.” Thus, “[d]ue care on the part of this [nine-year-old] boy might fall far short of that of a prudent man, and yet exceed that of average boys of his own age. According to the evidence as to his standing at school, he was much above the average of his class.” Id. at 417.

After the second trial in the Young case, the Court reiterated: “We distinctly held, and again hold, that due care, according to its age and capacity, is all that can be exacted of a child of tender years. This we did and again do with full knowledge that the code, in general language, exacts ordinary care, with no express exception as to children; but as ordinary care means, in our law, the care of every [346]*346prudent man, there must be an implied exception as to children, for it would be absurd to require the same measure of diligence from a child as from a man.

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Pearson v. Small World Day Care Center, Inc.
508 S.E.2d 200 (Court of Appeals of Georgia, 1998)
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Clanton v. Gwinnett County School District
464 S.E.2d 918 (Court of Appeals of Georgia, 1995)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
464 S.E.2d 918, 219 Ga. App. 343, 96 Fulton County D. Rep. 95, 1995 Ga. App. LEXIS 1031, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/clanton-v-gwinnett-county-school-district-gactapp-1995.