Refrigerated Transport Co. v. Paraday
Refrigerated Transport Co. v. Paraday
Opinion of the Court
1. "In all civil cases the parties thereto shall have the right to an individual examination of the panel of jurors from which the jury is to be selected, without interposing any challenge... and in such examination the counsel for
2. Briefly, this is a death action resulting from a collision which occurred when the car in which the decedent was a passenger, traveling in the inside lane for northbound traffic on 1-75 highway was struck by the Swain vehicle, traveling in the inside southbound lane, after Swain’s car and the tractor-trailer of the co-defendant Refrigerated Transport Co., also traveling south in the outside or curb lane for southbound traffic, somehow collided as Mrs. Swain was attempting to pass. Mrs. Swain lost control of her car and it jumped the median into the northbound lanes. Evidence as to causation was in conflict, some supporting the theory that Swain turned into the inside southbound lane to pass the tractor-trailer and hit the left rear wheels of the trailer, other testimony supporting the theory that she collided with the left rear wheels of the tractor as the latter was turning toward the inside lane. Whether or not the tractor-trailer partly crossed from the outside to the inside southbound lane at this juncture is also in dispute.
3. In the above connection, the court charged that if the jury found negligence on the part of both defendants which proximately caused the death "it would be your duty to return a verdict in favor of the plaintiffs against both defendants regardless of the degree of negligence attributable to any one defendant.” The instruction was not, as contended, unauthorized by any evidence in the case. Nor was it error as a matter of law. As stated in Stone’s Ind. Oil Distributors v. Bailey, 122 Ga. App. 294, 299 (176 SE2d 613): "In this State, notwithstanding the law elsewhere, it is not necessary that there be intentional concert or simultaneous action among those sought to be held jointly liable for injury. All that is required is that negligent acts, although separate and independent, be found to have combined naturally and directly to produce a single injury.” The appellant complains that the words "naturally and directly” were omitted from the instruction. The court charged fully on concurring negligence, stating that two negligent actors may be guilty when "both negligent causes are material facts in producing the injury”; that to so find "one or more of such acts of both defendants” must be the proximate cause of the injuries; that "there may be a recovery against either or both of the responsible parties where
4. The requested charge on reasonable care was given in substance in the reading of Code § 68-1626. Admittedly, the principle of law is there stated in the abstract, whereas the requested instruction was couched in evidentiary language ("if you find that Refrigerated Transport’s driver was exercising reasonable care and you further find that the defendant Mrs. Swain did not have her moter vehicle under reasonable control, plaintiff would not be entitled to recover against Refrigerated”) and is on that account perhaps less cogent. It is also less argumentative. (Should a correlative instruction in favor of Swain be given, for example?) The former rule was that the specific and concrete request took precedence over the general and abstract equally comprehensive instruction (see e.g. Leverette v. Awnings, Inc., 97 Ga. App. 811, 815 (104 SE2d 686)). That this rule was changed by the Appellate Practice Act, see Southern R. Co. v. Grogan, 113 Ga. App. 451, 457 (148 SE2d 439). In view of the whole charge, failure to give the instruction in the language requested was not error.
Judgment affirmed.
Case-law data current through December 31, 2025. Source: CourtListener bulk data.