White v. Knapp

120 S.E. 796, 31 Ga. App. 344, 1923 Ga. App. LEXIS 941
CourtCourt of Appeals of Georgia
DecidedDecember 7, 1923
Docket14834
StatusPublished
Cited by27 cases

This text of 120 S.E. 796 (White v. Knapp) 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
White v. Knapp, 120 S.E. 796, 31 Ga. App. 344, 1923 Ga. App. LEXIS 941 (Ga. Ct. App. 1923).

Opinion

Bell, J.

1. This was an action for damages for an injury received by the plaintiff while riding a bicycle, in a collision with an automobile driven by the defendant, when the parties were. traveling in opposite directions upon a public highway. A verdict was found for the plaintiff, and the defendant excepted to the overruling of his motion for a new trial. There was some evidence to authorize the inference that the defendant was traveling at the time on the left side of the road and was negligent in so doing, it being within the province of the jury to believe such evidence, although disputed. The question of proximate cause was also one for the jury, under the evidence, and the verdict was not unsupported. Civil Code. (1910), § 628.

2. An instruction that ordinary care and diligence “is that care and diligence which every prudent man exercises under -the same or similar circrimstances” was not erroneous on the ground that it authorized the jury to require of the defendant a degree of diligence which might be exercised by the most prudent or by any one more than ordinarily prudent. Civil Code (1910), § 3471; Richmond & Danville R. Co. v. Mitchell, 92 Ga. 77 (2) (18 S. E. 290); Sanders v. Central of Ga. Railway Co., 123 Ga. 763 (4) (51 S. E. 728); City of Atlanta v. Harper, 129 Ga. 415 (1) (59 S. E. 230); Collum v. Georgia Ry. &c. Co., 140 Ga. 573 (3) (79 S. E. 475).

3. The sole contention of each of the parties was that he himself was not negligent, but that the other party was, and that the other party’s negligence was the cause of the injury. Under such issues the charge to the jury, “You look to the evidence, and all of the circumstances shown upon the trial, and find who was guilty of negligence in this case, who was in fault, ” was not error upon the ground that it assumed that the injury was caused by some one’s negligence, or that it excluded the theory of accident. No such theory was involved.

4. In none of the excerpts from the charge assigned .as error did the trial judge intimate or express an opinion as to what had or had not been proved, in violation of the Civil Code, § 4863. The court’s statement of the plaintiff’s contentions was not argumentative or otherwise unfair to the defendant.

5. The court charged the jury as follows: “Now it is contended in this case by the plaintiff that he was riding along the public highway in the direction of Macon, and that the defendant was driving an automobile in the opposite direction; that is, going away from the City of Macon, and plaintiff was on the right-hand side of the roadway going in the direction that he was traveling, and that defendant was approaching him on the right-hand side of the roadway going in the direction in which defendant was traveling, and that defendant, immediately before they were passing, suddenly and without warning to plaintiff cut his automobile over to the left-hand side of the road upon which plaintiff was traveling, and that plaintiff was struck by the automobile and dragged back across the road and injured, and that plaintiff at the time was exercising ordinary care and diligence, and that as soon as he saw defendant was cutting his car across to the left of the road, that in order to avoid the injury which appeared to him to be imminent, by [345]*345colliding with tlie car, that he cut his bicycle across to the .left side of the road in order to avoid the collision, but that he was unable to do so, and ivas injured by no fault of Ms, d/ue lo the negligent operation of defendant of Ms automobile. The court charges you that if you believe that' those contentions have been sustained by a preponderance of the evidence it would be yoiu- duty to bring in a verdict for the plaintiff.” (italics ours.) This charge was not a violation of the well-known and oft-'repeatod rule that it is error for the trial judge to tell the jury that certain acts will constitute negligence, where the acts are not negligent per se. The excerpt was not erroneous for any reason assigned.

6. Error is also assigned upon the following charge: “The court charges you, in that connection, that if you should believe from the evidence that plaintiff was negligently and suddenly put in a place of peril by the defendant, with insufficient time to consider all the facts and circumstances which surrounded him, the law wouldn’t require of him the same degree of care and caution that it would a person who had ample time for the exercise of his judgment. In other words, when a person is suddenly put in the position of peril by the negligence of another, and where, under the circumstances, the' emergency is so.great that they have to act without having time to think, then a person confronted with such emergency is not held to as strict accountability as a person who has ample time to consider the circumstances and the situation.” The first sentence of this charge was perhaps inaccurate. The degree of care which the plaintiff was required, under the law, to exercise was not changed by the circumstances, though a particular act might comport with such degree under one set of circumstances and not under another. " Compare Atlantic Coast, Line R. Co. v. Daniels, 8 Ga. App. 775 (70 S. E. 203). But, considering the excerpt as a whole, it could not have been construed' as relieving’ the plaintiff from the duty of exercising ordinary care under the circumstances, as to which the jury were elsewhere correctly' instructed, and was not an invasion of the province of the jury in regard to the''“accountability” to ‘be required, in view of the application solely to an emergency “so great” that the party’would “have to act without having time to think.” See Atlantic Coast Line R. Co. v. Daniels, supra; Smith v. Wrightville & Tennille R. Co., 83 Ga. 671 (1) (10 S. E. 361); Central of Georgia Ry. Co. v. McGuire, 10 Ga. App. 483 (4) (73 S. E. 702); Georgia Ry. & Elec. Co. v. Gilleland, 133 Ga. 621 (7) (66 S. E. 944).

7. The plaintiff was injured on June 27, 1922. The trial was on March 16, 1923. ’ Both bones of one of the plaintiff’s legs were broken in two, and one bone punctured the skin. A physician testified that “near the place of the injury there develops a lump or callous, and that never disappears.” The plaintiff testified that the place of the injury would still hurt him occasionally, as late as the date of the trial; “it’s just a dull, throbbing kind of pain.” Under these circumstances the following charge: “The damages which the plaintiff claims he is entitled to in this case are for pain and suffering. He contends that he was injured at the time of the accident, and that he has'continued to suffer down to the present, and that he will always suffer, and that he is entitled to receive a verdict at your-hands for pain and suffering, which he con[346]*346tends will be permanent,” was not erroneous upon the ground that it would authorize a finding in favor of the plaintiff for permanent pain and suffering, without any evidence that the pain and suffering would be permanent. While the physician testified further that the plaintiff ought not to suffer any pain in the future, this testimony was not controlling of the issue. “The jury were authorized to infer that the effect of the injuries would be permanent, from the character of the suffering and the length of time it had continued. This is true although a physician testified that the injuries were temporary.

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Bluebook (online)
120 S.E. 796, 31 Ga. App. 344, 1923 Ga. App. LEXIS 941, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/white-v-knapp-gactapp-1923.