Joe v. Black

OPINION

This ease concerns the intersection of comparative negligence and nályééh The Kayenta District Court dismissed this case because it believed those concepts to be, among other things, fundamentally incompatible. The Court affirms the dismissal of Appellant’s complaint, but for different reasons than those given by the District Court.

I

This case arises out of a fatal accident between a motorist and a horse. Appellant Marilyn Joe (Joe) and Mario Nelson, Sr., hit a horse that wandered onto Highway 163, a road within the Utah portion of the Navajo Nation. Joe was pregnant at the time, and…