Bernardi v. Roedel

Sybert, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. This is an action for personal injuries sustained in a rear-end collision of motor vehicles. Bernardi, the plaintiff-appellant, appeals from a judgment for defendant-appellee Roedel, complaining, in essence, that the trial court committed reversible error by refusing to instruct the jury that appellee was negligent as a matter of law, that such negligence was the sole cause of the accident, and that appellant was not chargeable with any contributory negligence. The record shows that on the morning of February 21, 1958, described as “sort of hazy”, appellant was driving his employer’s three-quarter ton stake body truck, with a compressor in tow, in a northerly direction on U. S. Route 103 (Montgomery Road) in Howard County, Maryland.

The compressor, mounted on two wheels and attached to the truck by a ball and bracket, extended eight or ten feet to the rear of the truck and had neither lights nor license tag. There was also a quantity of two-inch pipe loaded on the bed of the truck and apparently projecting ten feet to the rear. Montgomery Road is a two-lane highway, about 24 feet wide. There had been a heavy snowfall that week and, although the road appears to have been relatively clear, there were still patches of ice which were covered by drifted snow.

While proceeding, according to his testimony, along a section of the road “straight with a gradual climb”, Bernardi observed a snowdrift on the road blocking his lane of traffic. He also saw an automobile coming south in the opposite lane. He said he had ample opportunity to stop—three or four hundred feet—so he began to slow down. When he noted that the car coming in the opposite direction would be at a point which would prevent him from going around the drift until this automobile had passed by it, he “broke to a halt” rather than braking all at once as he approached the drift.

Bernardi testified that while stopped completely at the drift, he felt a sudden jarring in the back end of the truck which ²¹ caused him to be knocked against the steering wheel, and he allegedly sustained an injury to his back. The impact resulted from the appellee’s car colliding with the compressor and pushing it underneath the rear of the truck. Bernardi stated that “the pipes were driven into the cab, and the tank was driven into the seat”. He indicated that he had not known prior to the impact that Roedel was following him.

It was undisputed that he gave no hand signal. Roedel testified that he had been following Bernardi’s truck for about one to one and a half miles at a distance of two car lengths when “all of a sudden I happened to notice that he is at a dead standstill”. He further testified that he did not see Bernardi slow down at all, nor did he observe appellant’s stoplights go on. He said that if he had seen lights he would have been able to stop in time.

He stated that immediately before the accident happened it appeared to him that Bernardi’s truck “was going straight into” the snowdrift. He also said that he first saw the southbound car as it went past him, and that he had not observed it earlier because he was “following straight behind” Bernardi. This Court has often held that questions of negligence and due care are generally questions for the jury to decide, and unless facts are undisputed and lead to conclusions from which reasonable minds could not differ, negligence as a matter of law cannot be a basis for an instruction to a jury. Kantor v. Ash, 215 Md. 285 , 137 A. 2d 661 (1958); Baltimore Transit Co. v. Prinz, 215 Md. 398 , 137 A. 2d 700 (1958) ; Marshall v. Sellers, 188 Md. 508 , 53 A. 2d 5 (1947).

Courts will be careful not to usurp the role of the jury where facts are disputed or where fair minds might draw different conclusions. Howard County v. Leaf, 177 Md. 82, 94 , 8 A. 2d 756, 761 (1939) ; State v. Carroll-Howard Sup. Co., 183 Md. 293 , 37 A. 2d 330 (1944). Only in exceptional cases will questions of negligence and contributory negligence pass from the realm of fact to that of law.

Cox v. Pennsylvania R. Co., 120 A. 2d 214 (D. C. Ct. Mun. App. 1956). Analysis of the testimony in this case reveals substantial ²² conflict in several important areas with respect to which the minds of reasonable men could differ, and therefore the questions raised thereby were properly submitted to the jury for decision. For example, appellant stated that he began decelerating at least three hundred feet from the snowdrift, yet appellee, who had been following appellant’s truck for approximately a mile and a half, two car lengths behind,