Court Opinion

ID: 9640397
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 17:05:19.540696+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:29.540443
License: Public Domain

Murphy, C. J.,

concurring:

I agree with the Court that the record before us contains legally sufficient evidence to carry the case to the jury on the issue of Mrs. Armiger’s primary negligence constituting a proximate cause of the accident. I also agree with the Court that the trial judge erred when he impliedly required Timothy “to adhere to the standard required of an adult without permitting the jury to give consideration to the matters normally considered in judging contributory negligence on the part of a child.” However, in remanding the case for a new trial without deciding whether a tricycle was a vehicle within the meaning of the then existing boulevard law, the Court leaves unanswered an issue, the determination of which may well affect the outcome of a subsequent trial. I think the Court should have provided guidance to the trial court respecting the applicability of the boulevard rule where the unfavored mode of transportation was a tricycle.1
The accident occurred in April, 1972. Then, and now, a vehicle was defined by Maryland Code (1957, 1970 Repl. Vol.) Art. 66V2, § 1-209 as “every device in, upon, or by which any person or property is or may be transported or drawn upon a highway.” The vehicle involved here was described as a tricycle, approximately 20 inches high, with a larger wheel on the front and two smaller wheels on the back, the front wheel being about 16 inches in diameter and the rear wheels *654about 9 inches in diameter. It was of plastic construction and did not have brakes of any kind. There is no contention that the tricycle was incapable of transporting a person upon a highway. In the absence of an express provision or exception to the contrary, the plain sense meaning of § 1-209 compels the conclusion that the tricycle involved here was, in April, 1972, a vehicle.2 There was, at that time, no provision or exception for tricycles. The legislature, perhaps anticipating harsh results in not having a special “tricycle” provision, enacted in 1974, two years after the accident in this case, Code, Art.- 66V2, § 1-104 (b) which categorizes a tricycle “propelled exclusively by human power” as a “play vehicle,” and hence not subject to the'mandaté of the boulevard law. In my opinion, the trial judge properly concluded that “[t]he tricycle upon which the plaintiff was riding fits within the definition Of a ‘vehicle’. . .” for at the time of the accident, there was not a “play vehicle” exception by which an unfavored driver of a tricycíé could escape application of the boulevard rule. The trial judge erred, not in finding the tricycle to be a vehicle, but only in failing to permit the jury to make the threshold determination of whether the child was or was not capable of contributory negligence.

. Maryland Code (1957, 1970 Repl. Vol.) Art. 66Y2, § 11-404 provides that “[t]he driver of a vehicle about to enter or cross a highway from a private road or driveway shall stop and yield the right-of-way to all vehicles approaching on the highway.” Tñat a “bicycle,” as defined in § 1-104, is a vehicle within the contemplation of the boulevard rule is plain from § 11-1202.

. Compare Moon v. Weeks, 25 Md. App. 322, 333 A. 2d 635 (1975), holding that a childls sled is obviously a vehicle since “it falls squarely within the definition of ‘vehicle’ when a person is transported upon it upon a highway.”