Doe v. Dewhirst

In this personal injury case, we deal with the sufficiency of proof of a 10-year-old child’s capacity for contributory negligence. We also determine whether a lay witness was competent to estimate the speed of the defendant’s car.

At approximately 11:00 p.m. on June 3, 1978, Matthew Dewhirst, then 10 and one-half years old, was seated in the front passenger seat of a station wagon driven by Kenneth G. Brown. After Brown parked facing traffic on the left side of a Fairfax residential street, Dewhirst opened the right front door and stepped into the travel lane of the street, about a foot from…