Opinion ID: 2401547
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: the case against the dorrs

Text: The plaintiffs contend that the lower court did not understand the nature of Leonard Bauman's employment, [1] and that the evidence presented against the Dorrs at the conclusion of the plaintiffs' case was sufficient to create a prima facie case of negligence. In their brief the plaintiffs Bauman argued that if Leonard was an independent contractor the duty owed to him by the Dorrs was entirely different than if there was a master-servant relationship. It is axiomatic that actionable negligence is the breach of a duty that is owed to another. If no duty is owed, then no action can be sustained even though an injury has occurred. Hettchen v. Chipman, 87 Md. 729, 41 Atl. 65. In order that an act or omission may be regarded as negligent, the person accused of negligence must have known or should have known that danger was involved in such act or omission or that the instrumentality or property causing the injury was in some way defective or dangerous. Adams v. Carey, 172 Md. 173, 190 Atl. 815. It is the general rule that the servant holds himself out as being capable of doing the work he undertakes to do, and that he assumes the risk incident to the employment. Hockaday v. Schloer, 125 Md. 677, 94 Atl. 526; Crown Cork Co. v. O'Leary, 108 Md. 463, 69 Atl. 1068; Buttner v. Steel Car Co., 101 Md. 168, 60 Atl. 597. However, it is the affirmative duty of an employer in a master-servant relationship to provide his employee with a reasonably safe place in which to work and to warn and instruct his employee concerning the dangers of the work known to him which are not obvious and can not be discovered by the exercise of reasonable care by the employee. This duty is relative and conditional, and what would be a full discharge of the duty under one set of circumstances may not be under another. The duty to warn or instruct depends upon the age, understanding, and experience of the employee and upon the nature of the work. Where the employee, by reason of his youthfulness or inexperience, is unable to comprehend the dangers of the work or where the dangers are of such nature as to give reasonable grounds for believing that they are not known to such employee or would not be discovered after a reasonable time, and they are actually or constructively known to the employer, the failure of the employer to warn the employee is a breach of his duty. Royster Guano Co. v. State, 130 Md. 170, 100 Atl. 104; Booth Packing Co. v. Greuner, 129 Md. 392, 99 Atl. 714; Hettchen v. Chipman, supra ; Michael v. Stanley, 75 Md. 464, 23 Atl. 1094. The contractee has a similar duty to warn an independent contractor of dangerous working conditions about which the contractee actually or constructively knows and the contractor could not reasonably discover. In Le Vonas v. Acme Paper Board Co., 184 Md. 16, 19-20, 40 A.2d 43, where suit was brought by employees of an independent contractor to recover for injuries alleged to have been caused by the failure of the contractee to warn plaintiffs that electrical wires were dangerous, this Court affirmed the directed verdict for the defendant and approved this rule as follows: In 1869 Judge Alvey announced the general rule in Deford v. State, to Use of Keyser, 30 Md. 179, 205, that a property owner must exercise care that his property is so used and managed, whether by his own servants or by an independent contractor, that the mode of conducting his work will not cause injury to servants or other persons. But the property owner who invites other persons to come upon his premises is not an insurer of those persons against every possible accident. He must exercise merely such care as a reasonably careful and prudent person would exercise to guard against dangers under the circumstances so as to make the premises reasonably safe. He will not be held liable for injuries resulting from dangers which are as obvious or familiar to the person injured as to him. It is only when there is some concealed peril, known to the owner but not known to the person injured, which he has failed to warn against, that he will be held responsible. In the case before us as to the Dorrs, plaintiff Leonard Bauman had nearly two years of experience with his father's Ford tractor on his father's farms and elsewhere. The boy had previously mowed, plowed, and towed with his tractor, had used the drawbar on several of these occasions, and, in fact, knew how to rig and to unrig it. He had also had experience with smaller tractors. He advertised his services by word of mouth and held himself out as being capable of doing the work he undertook to do. When he orally contracted to remove the fence posts for Mr. Dorr, he gave no indication that he had never done this type of work nor that he did not know the proper use of the tractor for pulling with a cable. He testified at the trial that he had never been instructed on what to do if the tractor's front end raised off the ground, yet at the time of the accident when he saw the front end of the tractor rising, he knew enough instinctively to try to disengage the gears by depressing the clutch pedal. In contrast to the amount of evidence concerning Leonard Bauman's experience with farm tractors, there was no sufficient evidence to show that the Dorrs had any superior knowledge regarding the use of the tractor, or any knowledge of the correct manner of pulling fence posts out of the ground with a tractor, or knowledge that Leonard Bauman might do so in an improper manner. Mr. Dorr was in the manufacturing business and his wife was a housewife. Together they raised ponies on their 28 acres. We hold that in light of Leonard Bauman's experience with tractors and his holding himself out as capable of performing the work, the Dorrs, who had no reason to question his capabilities or his experience concerning the use of the tractor, had no duty to warn or supervise him under either a master-servant or contractee-independent contractor theory. Therefore, under either theory the court below was correct in granting the Dorrs' motion for a directed verdict. Appellants also contend that the lower court, by granting a directed verdict for the defendants Dorr at the close of the plaintiffs' case thereby adversely affecting their case against the defendants Woodfield in the eyes of the jury, erred in not reserving its decision under Maryland Rule 552 c. Appellants have shown no prejudice. In negligence cases, it is incumbent upon the plaintiff to produce some evidence that the defendant violated some duty by his act or omission and thereby caused the injury. Brehm v. Lorenz, 206 Md. 500, 112 A.2d 475; Sullivan v. Smith, 123 Md. 546, 91 Atl. 456. Since the circumstances of this case permit only one inference  that the Dorrs owed no duty to warn or supervise Leonard Bauman, we perceive no reason why a directed verdict should not have been peremptorily granted. Richardson v. Boato, 207 Md. 301, 114 A.2d 49; Garozynski v. Daniel, 190 Md. 1, 57 A.2d 339.