Opinion ID: 1897769
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Denied Jury Instruction on Violation of the Maryland Child Abuse Act as Evidence of Negligence

Text: In her first assignment of error, Appellant essentially asks that we decide the following question in the affirmative: Did the trial court err in refusing to instruct the jury that violation of a statute may be evidence of negligence and that Maryland's Child Abuse Act, at the time pertinent to plaintiff's suit, required every health practitioner to report the existence of possible child abuse to social service and law enforcement authorities whenever the health practitioner treated a child and believed or had reason to believe the child had been abused? Specifically, Appellant takes issue with the trial court's refusal to give the jury two instructions she proposed regarding Appellees' arguable violation of the Maryland Child Abuse Act, codified during the relevant period under Article 27, § 35A, as well as the legal effect of both a violation and a non-violation of the statute. Appellant contended at trial that, during the time period pertinent to the present case, § 35A imposed a statutory duty upon Appellees to report the possibility of child abuse in certain circumstances, that the defendant doctors violated that duty in their treatment of Appellant, that their violation of the statute constituted evidence of medical malpractice, i.e., of Appellees' negligent failure to render the standard of care imposed upon their profession, and that a non-violation of the statute did not necessarily preclude a finding of professional negligence. The statutory duty of physicians to report suspected child abuse stemmed from two subsections of § 35A which in 1978 provided as follows: § 35A. Causing abuse to child under eighteen.