Court Opinion

ID: 9730911
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 15:27:43.839577+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:26:10.145945
License: Public Domain

Markell, J.,
dissents in part and delivered the following dissenting opinion.
I cannot agree that when a “safety zone”, sometimes called a safety island, does not extend to a street intersection, it is for the street car passenger, as a matter of law, only a safety island, completely surrounded by a sea of perils, where he has no right of way to escape to either shore, automobiles on every side have a right of way to mow him down blindly and he can only plunge into the sea and perish, unless by chance, without legal right or protection, he manages to reach shore and survive. In his plight this court says that “the truck driver [or the taxicab driver] was not bound to anticipate that a pedestrian would cross the street between cross walks, and whether or not the deceased had the green light when he started, if the truck [or taxicab] driver did not see him until too late to stop, * * * the * * * driver was [not] guilty of any negligence.” The driver may mow him down blindly because the driver is not bound to “anticipate” what every one knows, viz., that a passenger cannot make his abode on the island but must try to “cross the street”, to one side or the other, and can only do so where the island is, i.e., “between [street intersection] cross walks.”
This Draconic result is reached by construing several statutory provisions, intended for the protection of street car passengers, as having the combined effect of giving him no protection but depriving him of the protection he had at common law without statutory requirement. At common law, before safety zones or traffic lights or *560statutory rights of way or requirements of stopping behind street cars, the automobile driver’s duty of due care in all circumstances — which has never been superseded by statute — included a duty to “anticipate” the obvious dangers of running by street cars. “* * * it is unquestionably very dangerous to have automobiles and other motor vehicles running by street cars, which are taking on or letting off passengers. Anyone who uses street cars to any extent has probably observed that some drivers of automobiles are particularly careless and indifferent to the safety of others getting on or off street cars * * Dashiell v. Jacoby, 142 Md. 330, 339, 120 A. 751, 754. Cf. Winner v. Linton, 120 Md. 276, 87 A. 674; Maryland Ice Cream Co. v. Woodburn, 133 Md. 295, 105 A. 269; and cases collected in Note, 47 A. L. R. 1233, on liability of the owner of a motor vehicle for injury to a person who has alighted from or is waiting for a street car. Such liability has been enforced in cases of accidents at regular stopping places not at a street crossing, and in cases of persons crossing in front of the street car to the left sidewalk, or crossing behind the car to the sidewalk. See cases cited in Berry on Automobiles (7th Ed.), paragraphs 3.310, 3.318, 3.319. In some circumstances the street railway company may also be liable for letting off a passenger at a dangerous place. Berry, paragraph 3.312.
Safety zones and stop laws do not supplant but implement the duty of due care. In Maryland the stop law is an alternative for a safety zone. “Except where safety zones are provided, the driver * * * of every vehicle shall * * * stop” at least five feet behind a street car which has stopped. Code, Supplement 1947, art. 661/2, sec. 183. A safety zone thus relieves the driver of an automobile of the statutory duty to stop, but not of the universal duty of due care. Dashiell v. Jacoby, supra. It has never been suggested by the court that because a safety zone does not extend to the street intersection (as it seldom does) the passing motor car driver is thereby relieved of all duty to look out for the passenger. *561In Dashiell v. Jacoby, there was a platform along the tracks “just south” of the intersecting street, and plaintiff “jumped from the street car across the safety zone,” necessarily still further south. Supra, 142 Md. 332, 333, 120 A. 751. Though the stop law does not protect the passenger on the island, he is protected either if, (a) the safety zone is a “marking on the surface of the roadway” which “distinctly indicates a portion of the roadway for pedestrians crossing” or if (6) the duty of due care includes the same care to look out for passengers leaving the island as to look out for passengers leaving a street car in the absence of an island or a stop law. In ignoring both of these views of this case, the court in effect holds that the successive physical devices and legal duties required by statute, largely or solely for the protection of passengers and other pedestrians, e.g. safety zones, traffic lights, the stop law and statutory rights of way, have defeated each other and destroyed the paramount duty of due care, so far as the pedestrian on an island is concerned, and have outlawed him as a “jaywalker”, as if he had selected the location of the island and had deliberately selected a forbidden one.
The definition of a “crosswalk” in section 2(a) (9) supplants judicial interpretation of “street crossing” as meaning a customary or reasonable crossing in case of an irregular intersection. Legum v. State, for Use of Moran, 167 Md. 339, 173 A. 565; Consolidated Gas & Electric Light and Power Company v. Rudiger, 151 Md. 226, 134 A. 326. As applied to regular rectangular crossings, the new definition may simplify and clarify the law. As applied to irregular crossings, the imaginary lines in the definition would often be dangerous and inadequate and would be quite unworkable as a measure of due care.
No case has been cited, and I have found none, which outlaws any passenger marooned on a safety island who takes the most direct route to escape. By a reasonable construction of section 2(a) (9) a safety zone per se indicates a “crosswalk”. In any event the duty of due *562care requires the same protection for the passenger in crossing, whether or not he has a technical right of way. The only cases on like facts that I have found in any jurisdictions seem to sustain both of these propositions.
In Nisley v. Sawyer Service, Inc., 123 Or. 293, 261 P. 890, 891, the facts were substantially the same as in the instant case except that the passenger was crossing from the island to the near side of the street. The court said, “The ‘safety island’ was either placed in the street by the city or with its permission. It was not at an intersection of two streets, but was near the middle of the block between Morrison and Yamhill streets. It was placed in the street to facilitate loading and unloading passengers. The ‘safety island’ would be of no benefit if the passengers were not permitted to pass from the sidewalk to the island and from the island to the sidewalk. It cannot be said that a passenger on a street car who passes from the island directly to the sidewalk, thereby traveling a distance of 10 feet, is violating a city ordinance because he is crossing the street at a place other than an intersection. A person passing from the island to the sidewalk is crossing part of the street at a place designated by the city authorities, or under their supervision. The ordinance provides that pedestrians shall refrain from crossing streets within the restricted district, except at the regular crossings and at right angles. Plaintiff was crossing at right angles the part of the street between the platform and the sidewalk. If it be conceded that he was crossing the street within the meaning of that term, as used in the ordinance of the city of Portland, then we must conclude that he was crossing at a regular crossing, because we cannot conceive that the city, in order to protect the lives and limbs of its citizens, would require a person to travel longitudinally along the street more than 40 feet, and then be as far from the sidewalk as he was from the place from which he started. To do so Would be to require the citizen unnecessarily to take the extra hazard of walking near the center of the street *563in the midst of the traffic in a congested and restricted area, and then at right angles through the traffic to the sidewalk. A street car had just unloaded passengers at the ‘safety island.’ It was the duty of all automobile operators to proceed with the utmost caution to avoid injuring a passenger while passing from the safety island to the sidewalk. Plaintiff had all of the right to cross from the island to the sidewalk that the defendant had to operate his car between the platform and the sidewalk. Whether or not plaintiff was guilty of negligence in not discovering the automobile before it struck him is a question of fact for the jury under all circumstances.”
In Kingston v. Hardt, 18 Cal. App. 2d 61, 62 P. 2d 1376, the same result was reached (one judge dissenting) in a case (like the instant case) in which the passenger was crossing to the far side of the street. See also Croxall v. Broadway Department Store, 127 Cal. App. 153, 15 P. 2d 546.
A pedestrian who sees an automobile a few seconds distant and steps off a safety island in front of it, may be guilty of contributory negligence. Jendrzejewski v. Baker, 182 Md. 41, 31 A. 2d 611. In the instant case, unless any attempt to leave the island is negligence per se, as “failing to yield” the all-encircling right of way, the victim in the instant case was not, as a matter of law, guilty of contributory negligence. He grasped the only straw at hand, the traffic light. When the light changed his reliance on it proved illusory in fact; the court now holds it was illusory in law. He had no chance of escape at all to the south. Cars dash by on the south at all times, to the light when it is red, through it when it is green. In the circumstances any question of contributory negligence is for the jury.
In Kingston v. Hardt, supra, in which the passenger crossed to the far side of the street, the court said [18 Cal. App. 2d 61, 62 P. 2d 1378], “If custom and usage has established the practice of walking from the safety island over the Van Ness tracks to the safety zone on the easterly side of that avenue, then to the curb, and then *564to the boarding zone on Geary, it cannot be said as a matter of law that one is guilty of contributory negligence in following that established custom. On the other hand, if no such custom or practice is established, and the course followed by the plaintiff was the course which a reasonable person would have followed under the circumstances, the question of contributory negligence is equally one to be determined by the jury.”
I concur in the result in reversing the judgment as to the taxicab and in holding the evidence legally sufficient to show that the taxicab driver, after he saw the victim knocked down by the truck and lying helpless in the street, could by the exercise of due care have avoided running over and killing him. I cannot concur in finding the victim guilty of contributory negligence or breach of duty to the taxicab driver in being knocked down by the truck, or in the dicta, apparently an afterthought, on the subject of “last clear chance”. When the driver saw the victim lying helpless in the street it was his duty to exercise due care to avoid him. How he got into his helpless position — whether by being shot down by a gunman, or thrown out of a truck or car by kidnappers, or by his own negligence — is immaterial. This broad elemental principle is the basis — or one of the bases— of the “last clear chance” doctrine; to treat it as in any way based upon or affected by that doctrine is to put the cart before horse. If the victim had negligently stood still in the street and was not really helpless or unable to step out of the way of the taxicab, it' would have been necessary to determine whether the taxicab driver had the “last clear chance” to avoid him after it was too late for him to save himself, i.e., whether his continuing negligence was a concurrent — or sole — proximate cause of his injury and death. As the victim was obviously helpless when the taxicab driver first saw him, no question of contributory negligence (and, as the court now holds, there was no “primary” negligence) or “last clear chance” is presented. The confused subject of “last clear chance” becomes only more confused if applied outside of its proper field.
*565It is incredible that the legislature, by cumulating physical and legal protections for street car passengers, intended to leave them on an island without any physical or legal protection at all in getting off. The street car seems to be on the way out. If before it becomes extinct drivers of motor vehicles become aware of their rights and their freedom from any duty to look out for passengers trying to escape from a safety island, passengers will be extinguished unless the Baltimore traffic authorities paint on the surface of the roadway lines of escape for pedestrians, which ought to be plainly enough “marked” by the island itself without “saying it with paint.”
I think the judgments should be reversed as to both the truck and the taxicab.