Court Opinion

ID: 9764446
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 03:22:31.144412+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:29:56.794799
License: Public Domain

BLOOM, Judge,
dissenting.
The Court of Special Appeals is an error-correcting court, not a policy-making court. It is not for us to create new law to conform to our concepts of morality and rectitude. The Legislature may change the law by statute; the Court of Appeals may, by judicial fiat, alter the common law as it has adopted, created, or defined it. We, however, must apply the law as it is, not as we might like it to be.
I dissent from the majority opinion because I believe that it usurps the authority of the Court of Appeals and the Legislature to make such changes in the law as are deemed appropriate to suit the mores of the times. The majority, of course, denies that it has done so; it believes that its holding is consistent with the “fireman’s rule” that has long been part of the law of this and many other states. But that belief is based upon faulty reasoning.
The entire panel is agreed that appellant’s initial status on appellee’s property was that of a business invitee. He was an off-duty police officer who went to the 7-11 as a customer. We are also agreed that before appellee’s alleged breach of duty to him, he had assumed the role of a police officer performing the duties of his office — he had announced that he was a police officer and that his assailant was under arrest. His actions were in accordance with § 4.2.17 of the “Rules, Regulations, and Manual of Procedures” of the Anne Arundel County Police Department, which, at the time of this incident, provided:
Members of the Department are held to be always on duty, although periodically relieved from their routine performance. They are subject at all times to orders from the proper authorities and to calls from citizens. The fact that they may be “off-duty” shall not be held as *261relieving them from the responsibility of taking proper police action in any matter coming to their attention.
Finally, we are all agreed that because appellant was on appellee’s premises in the performance of his duties as a police officer when he was attacked and beaten by the three individual defendants, the “fireman’s rule” applied.
It is a well established rule of law that the owner or occupant of premises owes no duty of care to a fireman or policeman who comes upon his property in the performance of his duties except to abstain from willful or wanton misconduct or entrapment. The rule was first applied in Maryland in Steinwedel v. Hilbert, 149 Md. 121, 131 A. 44 (1925), involving a fireman who fell down an open elevator shaft while fighting a fire. Although called the fireman’s rule, it is equally applicable to policemen. See Sherman v. Suburban Trust Co., 282 Md. 238, 384 A.2d 76 (1978), in which the Court explicated the rule as being based upon principles of premises liability law. A fireman or policeman entering premises in the performance of his duty was deemed to be a bare licensee, who must take the property as he finds it. The owner or occupant of land owes no duty to a licensee except, after becoming aware of the licensee’s presence, the licensor must not willfully injure or entrap him. 282 Md. at 241-43, 384 A.2d 76.
In the recent case of Flowers v. Rock Creek Terrace, 308 Md. 432, 520 A.2d 361 (1987), the Court continued to recognize the rule but held that it is based upon public policy grounds rather than on principles of premises liability law.
We agree that the fireman’s rule is best explained by public policy. As pointed out in Aravanis v. Eisenberg [237 Md. 242, 206 A.2d 148 (1965) ], supra, it is the nature of the firefighting occupation that limits a fireman’s ability to recover in tort for work-related injuries. Instead of continuing to use a rationale based on the law of premises liability, we hold that, as a matter of public policy, firemen and police officers generally cannot recover for injuries attributable to the negligence that requires their assistance. This public policy is based on a relation*262ship between firemen and policemen and the public that calls on these safety officers specifically to confront certain hazards on behalf of the public.
We reiterate, however, that firemen and policemen are not barred from recovery for all improper conduct. Negligent acts not protected by the fireman’s riile may include failure to warn the firemen of pre-existing hidden dangers where there was knowledge of the danger and an opportunity to warn. They also may include acts which occur subsequent to the safety officer’s arrival on the scene and which are outside of his anticipated occupational hazards. As indicated by this Court in Aravanis, the fireman’s rule should not apply “when the fireman sustains injuries after the initial period of his anticipated occupational risk, or from perils not reasonably foreseeable as part of that risk.” In these situations a fireman or policeman is owed a duty of due care.
Id. 308 Md. at 447-48, 520 A.2d 361 (citations omitted).
Since the rule is based upon public policy grounds, it is immaterial that appellant was already on the premises, as a patron, when the incident that required him to act in the capacity of a police officer arose. He was injured in the performance of his duty; the hazard he encountered was one his duty required him to confront. There is no suggestion that appellee did anything to injure or entrap him, or failed to warn him of any hidden or unexpected peril. Nor, I maintain, was appellee responsible for anything that occurred outside of appellant’s anticipated hazards.
The theory on which the majority bases its holding is that appellee’s employee’s refusal to call 911 when requested to do so was “an event in the nature of a ‘hidden danger,’ ” an unanticipated risk; an act of negligence after appellant assumed the role of a police officer in the performance of his official duties. That theory defies all logic. Appellee’s employee’s refusal to call for assistance could not be a hidden danger, an unanticipated risk, an “act of negli*263gence,” ie., a negligent omission, unless there was a duty to act that appellant had a right to rely on. Obviously, unless one has a duty to summons help for a police officer in trouble when requested to do so, the failure to call for help can hardly be deemed to be an unexpected risk or hazard of the policeman’s job. It is an exercise in circuitous reasoning to conclude that such a duty arises because the officer is relying on it, because the officer cannot rely on someone else performing a duty unless the duty exists independent of such reliance.
There is unquestionably a moral obligation on the part of one human being to come to the aid of another in peril. And the obligation is all the stronger when the aid sought involves nothing more than picking up a telephone and dialing 911 to summon others who are trained and equipped to protect life and property. But neither the common law nor any statute of this state imposes civil liability upon one who declines to perform even a minimal task to help a fellow human being in danger or distress. If, therefore, I see my neighbor being mugged or his house on fire, I am morally obligated to call the police or the fire department, since I can do that with little effort and no danger to myself. If I choose not to do so, however; if I simply close my eyes, turn my back, do nothing, I shall probably suffer the opprobrium my conduct merits, but until now, under the law of this state, I could not be held legally accountable for the harm sustained by my neighbor.
The majority relies heavily on Soldano v. O’Daniels, 141 Cal.App.3d 443, 190 Cal.Rptr. 310 (1983). But not even the California intermediate appellate court, which is noted for innovative judicial activism, went so far as the majority has gone in the case sub judice. In Soldano, a good Samaritan, observing someone attack a patron in a tavern, ran across the street to a restaurant that was open for business and requested an employee of the restaurant (a bartender) either to call the police or let the good Samaritan use the telephone to call the police. The bartender refused to do either. The tavern patron who was being attacked was shot *264and killed. The restaurant owner was held liable, not because his bartender did nothing, that is, refused to dial 911 himself, but because he refused to let the good Samaritan use the telephone to call the police, as is apparent from the opening sentence of Judge Andreen’s opinion:
Does a business establishment incur liability for wrongful death if it denies use of its telephone to a good Samaritan who explains an emergency situation occurring without and wishes to call the police?
The Soldano Court expressly recognized that the law has consistently refused “to recognize the moral obligation of one to aid another when he is in peril and when such aid may be given without danger and at little cost in effort.” The Court relied on § 327 of the Restatement, 2d, Torts, dealing with prevention of assistance by third persons, which provides that if one knows that a third person is ready to give aid to another and negligently prevents the third person from doing so, he is subject to liability for harm caused by the absence of the aid. The Restatement explains that preventing a third person from rendering aid to another can take many forms, including preventing the third person from using a thing which the third person is using or attempting to use in giving aid. In the case sub judice, there was no refusal to let appellant’s son use the telephone; the allegation is that appellee’s clerk did not make the call when requested to do so.
The majority also stresses the creation of the 911 telephone system to make it easier for people in need of police, fire, ambulance, or other emergency assistance to summon it. But there is nothing in the law establishing that system to suggest an intent to create tort liability for failing to use it.
My disagreement with the majority opinion goes beyond what I believe to be a usurpation of authority to create a new basis for tort liability. It extends to the imposition of that liability on the appellee on the basis of respondeat superior.
*265Although the majority opinion stresses the moral obligation each of us owes to come to the aid of someone in peril, particularly if aid can be rendered safely and with little effort, it does not impose liability on appellee on that basis. To do so would logically extend the duty and the concomitant liability for failure to perform the duty to any person who may be requested to call 911 to summon policemen, firemen, or medical personnel in an emergency. That far the majority is unwilling or admittedly unable to go. Furthermore, a duty and a liability created on that basis would logically be confined to the morally delinquent individual. Why should an employer be responsible for an employee’s breach of a highly personal duty founded on a moral responsibility every human being owes to his fellow man? In this case, however, appellant seeks to hold the employer liable for the default of the employee; the employee obviously possessed of shallow pockets, is not even named as a defendant.
In order to keep from going too far afield in creating a new tort liability, the majority tries to attach that liability to an exception to the fireman’s rule. But the fireman’s rule is a rule of premises liability law. It relieves the owner or occupant of premises from liability for injuries sustained by a fireman or a policeman while performing his job on those premises, and the exceptions to the rule, referred to in Flowers and relied upon by the majority, involve unknown, unexpected, and hidden dangers, risks, and hazards associated with the premises. The refusal of a store clerk to dial three numbers on a telephone to summon police assistance is a personal delinquency that does nothing to make the premises more hazardous than the policeman on the scene has reason to anticipate.
Under the fireman’s rule, since appellant was injured in the performance of his police duties, the fact that those duties were being performed and the injuries occurred on appellee’s premises create no liability for appellee. Being beaten by three thugs whom he undertook to subdue and arrest was a known risk and hazard of appellant’s employ*266ment, and that risk was not enhanced or exacerbated by the alleged refusal by appellee’s employment to call for police assistance when requested to do so. Nor was the refusal to call the police itself an unforeseeable hazard associated with the premises that came within any exception to the fireman’s rule. The grant of summary judgment in favor of appellee was eminently correct and should be affirmed.
Judge Cathell authorizes me to state that he fully concurs in this opinion.