Opinion ID: 1963182
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: The Requests For Instructions

Text: The appellants contend that the trial court erred when it refused to grant the requested instructions set forth in its fourth, eleventh and twelfth prayers which read as stated below. The fourth prayer: The defendants pray the court to instruct the jury that if a plaintiff to a suit is able to produce a witness who may have knowledge of the facts and fails to call that witness or explain the witness' absence, then there is a presumption that the party's testimony would be unfavorable to the plaintiff. The eleventh prayer: The defendants pray the court to instruct the jury that if they find from the evidence that the driver of the taxicab drove off after the door of his vehicle was closed; and that at that time, he could not have seen that the lower part of the plaintiff's long raincoat was caught in the door because of the location of the coat and that the plaintiff had placed herself in a position of peril; then he had a right to assume that the plaintiff had alighted safely and the verdict of the jury must be for the defendants. And the twelfth prayer: The defendants pray the court to instruct the jury that if from the evidence they find that the plaintiff, after alighting from the taxicab, closed the right rear door of the taxicab and that the door closed upon her coat, catching it between the door and the door post, then they must find that it was the plaintiff's act which set in motion a chain of events resulting in her own injuries and in the absence of her own act such would not have occurred, and therefore, their verdict must be for the defendants. As to the fourth prayer, the claim that it was incumbent upon the plaintiffs to produce the persons they listed as being at or near the scene in response to an interrogatory of the defendants is without substantial merit. In the first place, the interrogatory sought the names of the persons who were at or near the scene, not the names of the persons who had witnessed the accident. In addition to this, the claim is based on the supposition that had such persons been called as witnesses they might have testified to circumstances other than those which would have been cumulative. As opposed to this, it appears that the named persons were not called by the plaintiffs because, not being eye witnesses, having arrived at the scene after the accident had occurred, their testimony at most, could have done no more than corroborate the testimony of the eye witnesses who were called. While in some circumstances it is true that if a party, without a satisfactory explanation, fails to produce the testimony of an available witness on a material issue, it may be inferred that the testimony would be unfavorable to the party who fails to call him, Critzer v. Shegogue, 236 Md. 411, 204 A.2d 180 (1964), such an inference is not drawn from the failure of a party to produce cumulative and corroborative evidence. United Rys. & Elec. Co. v. Cloman, 107 Md. 681, 69 Atl. 379 (1908); Joppy v. Hopkins, 231 Md. 52, 188 A.2d 545 (1963). As to the eleventh and twelfth prayers, the claims of error are wholly without merit for the reason that the trial court gave its own adequate instructions as it had authority to do under Rule 554 b 1. Probably (a) because the eleventh prayer, in addition to stating no theory as to how the raincoat got caught in the cab door, ignored the testimony of both the passenger and the eye witness to the effect that the driver had reached toward the rear door and closed it and (b) because the twelfth prayer sought an instruction which ignored a determination of whether the driver or the passenger closed the cab door on the raincoat, the court properly instructed the jury that  The crucial question as to the cause of the accident in question will be determined by your finding from the evidence as to how the plaintiff's coat became attached to some part of the defendant vehicle immediately prior to her injury. [1] If you find from the evidence that the defendant driver closed the right rear door of his taxicab upon part of the plaintiff's coat and thereby caught the coat between the door and the body of the cab, then, under those circumstances, the defendant was obliged, in the exercise of ordinary care, to ascertain that the plaintiff was free of the taxicab before he drove off. [2] If you find that the plaintiff's coat was caught while the driver was the person closing the door, under these circumstances, if you find that the defendant's failure to ascertain that the plaintiff was free of the cab was the cause of the plaintiff's injury, without any contributory negligence on the plaintiff's part, your verdict then must be in favor of the plaintiff. [3] On the other hand, if you find from the evidence that the plaintiff closed the door herself on her own coat, and if you further find that the defendant driver, in the exercise of due care, could not see that the plaintiff's coat was caught in the door, then the defendant driver had the right to assume that the plaintiff had alighted safely from the cab and, under those circumstances, you must find that the plaintiff was guilty of contributory negligence and your verdict must be in favor of the defendant. This instruction (as far as it went) not only correctly stated the law from the standpoint of the defendants as well as the plaintiffs, but the last sentence, bracketed as [3], in substance, though not word for word, embodied the eleventh and twelfth prayers of the defendants. Aside from this it seems to us that had the jury been instructed exactly as requested in the eleventh and twelfth prayers such instruction could well nigh have been tantamount to a directed verdict for the defendants.