Court Opinion

ID: 9647771
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 13:50:06.210441+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:32:10.142642
License: Public Domain

WILNER, Judge,
dissenting.
I concur with the panel majority’s resolution of Issues (1), (3), and (4). I dissent, however, from its conclusion that, as a matter of law, appellant’s decedent was not contributorily negligent. On the record before us, I would hold that the issue of his contributory negligence was properly submitted to the jury, and so I would affirm the judgment.
It is not clear from the majority opinion whether the majority believes that Mr. Eichhorn was not negligent at all in walking his motorcycle on the four-foot shoulder or that he could properly be held to have been negligent but that his negligence did not contribute to the accident. At one point, the majority seems willing to assume that the decedent’s presence on the shoulder constituted negligence, but at another point it raises some doubt — “[djecedent’s negligence, if negligence it is — standing and/or walking a motorcycle along the mini-shoulder — was at best ‘merely passive and potential.’ ”
*97I do not suggest that mere presence on the shoulder of any road constitutes, or could be taken to constitute, contributory negligence. But this was not any road or any shoulder. This was a narrow shoulder immediately adjacent to the passing lane of a controlled-access high speed Interstate highway. The evidence was certainly sufficient to demonstrate that Mr. Eichhorn was in a position of extreme danger as he walked or straddled his motorcycle on that narrow shoulder. If, as witnesses confirmed, he was in the middle of that four-foot wide shoulder, his body was likely within a foot and a half of the traveled portion of the highway. All sorts of vehicles travel in that lane, including wide and large trucks. One witness, who passed by Mr. Eichhorn just ahead of Mr. Hathaway, was concerned enough about Eichhorn’s safety to watch him from the rear view mirror. His concern, he said, was because “[Mr. Eichhorn] wasn’t over far enough.” Although Eichhorn was on the shoulder, the witness noted, “I didn’t know whether the truck could make it.” Another witness expressed the same concern upon seeing Mr. Eichhorn on that shoulder:
“I come ... I come up over the hill and I noticed that there was a motorcycle on the ... on the east bound side of the highway ... and I seen he was pushing it. And I had another guy with me. And I just mentioned to him, he should get over a little more. And it was a matter of seconds then I seen the impact____”
Appellant argues that, because the evidence showed that the grassy strip dividing the highway was somewhat rutted and uneven, it was not feasible for Mr. Eichhorn to walk his motorcycle on that strip. That may or may not be, but it does not detract from the evidence that remaining on the shoulder was extremely dangerous. Under the circumstances, a reasonable jury could well find that a reasonably prudent person in Eichhorn’s situation, whatever it was, would have recognized the obvious danger and moved on to the grassy strip and remained there until help arrived. What Mr. Eichhorn did was not substantially different from *98standing a foot or two away from a person bound to a stake and about to be shot by a firing squad. One can always hope that the soldiers will shoot straight and hit only the intended victim, but I daresay it would be foolish and unrealistic not to appreciate that, by human or mechanical error, a lethal missile may go astray.
The contributory nature of Mr. Eichhom’s negligence is apparent; indeed, in this circumstance, it arises from the very nature of the negligence. He placed himself in a position where, if a vehicle traveling at high speed strayed by more than a foot or so, he was most likely to be severely injured or killed. That was the negligence. He was, in fact, killed when precisely that event occurred. To try to distinguish between “passive” and active or “potential” and actual negligence in this circumstance makes no real sense. If Mr. Eichhorn was negligent in walking his motorcycle less than two feet from the left lane of the Beltway, that negligence clearly contributed to the injuries he received.
“To be contributorily negligent,” said the Court in Hooper v. Mougin, 263 Md. 630, 633, 284 A.2d 236 (1971), “a plaintiff must either perform or fail to perform an act which is a proximate cause of the particular injury of which he complains. His conduct is judged by a norm of ordinary care and the failure by the plaintiff to meet this standard constitutes contributory negligence barring his recovery.” Put another way, the question is whether the plaintiffs conduct “was commensurate with the conduct of a reasonably prudent person acting under like or similar circumstances.” Sckwier v. Gray, 277 Md. 631, 635, 357 A.2d 100 (1976). As further made clear in Schwier, quoting from Heffner v. Admiral Taxi Service, 196 Md. 465, 473-74, 77 A.2d 127 (1950):
“Where there is a conflict of evidence as to material facts relied upon to establish contributory negligence, or the act is of such a nature that reasonable minds, after considering all the circumstances surrounding the accident, may draw different conclusions as to whether it constituted contributory negligence, it is not for the *99court to determine its quality as a matter of law, but it is for the jury to pass upon it.”
(Emphasis added.)
That, I think, was precisely the situation here. It was a jury issue, and this Court has no business interfering with the jury’s resolution of it.