Blake v. Chadwick

Annette Blake v. David Chadwick, et al., No. 1939 of the 2019 Term, Opinion by Moylan, J. HEADNOTE: CONTRIBUTORY NEGLIGENCE – A FLURRY OF PLEADINGS – SUMMARY JUDGMENT – A THREE-CAR PILE-UP: TINKER TO EVERS TO CHANCE – GENERIC NEGLIGENCE VS. CONTRIBUTORY NEGLIGENCE – PROXIMATE CAUSATION – “BUT FOR” IS NOT THE APPROPRIATE CRITERION – IN HARM’S WAY – ONE LAST PROCEDURAL HICCUP Circuit Court for Baltimore City Case No. 24-C-18-006404 REPORTED IN THE COURT OF SPECIAL APPEALS OF MARYLAND No. 1939 September Term, 2019 ___________________________________ ANNETTE BLAKE V. DAVID CHADWICK, ET AL. Fader, C.J., Zic, Moylan, Charles E., Jr. (Senior Judge, Specially Assigned), JJ. Opinion by Moylan, J. _____________________________________ Filed: February 26, 2021 Pursuant to Maryland Uniform Electronic Legal Materials Act (§§ 10-1601 et seq. of the State Government Article) this document is authentic. 2021-04-07 10:16-04:00 Suzanne C. Johnson, Clerk As a result of a three-car collision on Martin Luther King Boulevard (“MLK Boulevard”), the appellant, Annette Blake (“Ms. Blake”; “the Plaintiff”; “Vehicle #3”), filed suit against the other two drivers in the Circuit Court for Baltimore City.

Because of the multiplicity of parties and of vehicles, we will try meticulously to keep them all as precisely identified as possible. Ms. Blake was the Plaintiff and she brought suit on behalf of herself and her two minor grandchildren, all of whom were in Vehicle #3. There are two appellees. The first is Defendant #1, David Chadwick (“Mr. Chadwick”), who was driving a truck owned by his co-defendant, the Mayor and City Council of Baltimore City, and referred to herein as Vehicle #1.

The second appellee is Defendant #2, Denia Phillips Watkins (“Ms. Watkins”), who was driving Vehicle #2. A Flurry Of Pleadings The accident occurred on August 2, 2016. Suit was filed by Ms. Blake against both defendants on November 27, 2018. On August 28, 2019, Mr. Chadwick, along with the City of Baltimore, filed a Motion for Summary Judgment.

Ms. Blake filed an Opposition to Chadwick’s Motion for Summary Judgment on September 16, 2019. Ms. Watkins, Defendant #2, who had not theretofore been heard from, filed a Response to Co- Defendant’s Motion for Summary Judgment on September 20, 2019, in which she also asked for Summary Judgment in her favor. A hearing was held before the circuit court on October 16, 2019 on Chadwick’s Motion for Summary Judgment. Although not listed as part of the title of the hearing, Defendant #2, Ms. Watkins, was represented by counsel at the hearing, who fully participated in the hearing in every respect.

On October 25, 2019, the court issued an Order and Memorandum Opinion in which it found that Ms. Blake had been contributorily negligent and, accordingly, it granted Summary Judgment in favor of Defendant #1, Mr. Chadwick. There was no disposition made with respect to Defendant #2, Ms. Watkins. On November 4, 2019, the appellant, Ms. Blake, filed a Motion for Clarification, Reconsideration, and Alteration. In that motion, Ms. Blake made express reference to a pleading filed by Ms. Watkins in which she also had requested Summary Judgment in her favor.

Ms. Blake pointed out that the court’s Order in the case “had been silent as to Plaintiff’s claims against Defendant #2, Ms. Watkins.” Among the clarifications sought by the Motion were: 5. All Plaintiffs seek clarification of the Order with respect to the continuance of their claims against Defendant Denia Watkins. On November 18, 2019, both defendants filed separate Oppositions to the Plaintiff’s Motion For Clarification in which they each renewed their requests for Summary Judgment. On December 9, 2019, the court issued an Order in which it reaffirmed its granting of Summary Judgment in favor of both defendants, Mr. Chadwick and Ms. Watkins.

Summary Judgment The basic standard of appellate review with respect to the granting of Summary Judgment was well articulated by Rooney v. Statewide Plumbing & Heating-Gen. Contractors, Inc., 265 Md. 559, 563 , 290 A.2d 496 (1972): 2 If the pleadings, depositions, admissions, and affidavits, if any, show that there is no genuine dispute as to any material fact and that the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law, then summary judgment should be granted. See also Rossello v. Zurich Am. Ins.

Co., 468 Md. 92, 102 , 226 A.3d 444 (2020). The granting of summary judgment is reviewed de novo. Petty v. Mayor & City Council of Baltimore City, 232 Md. App. 116, 121 , 156 A.3d 976 (2017). “In reviewing a grant of summary judgment under Md. Rule 2-501, we independently review the record to determine whether the parties properly generated a dispute of material fact and, if not, whether the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.” Hill v. Cross Country Settlements, LLC, 402 Md. 281, 293 , 936 A.2d 343 (2007). In granting or denying a motion for summary judgment, a trial court makes no findings of fact, and in deciding whether a material factual dispute exists, all reasonable inferences drawn from the facts must be resolved in favor of the non-moving party.

King v. Bankerd, 303 Md. 98, 111 , 492 A.2d 608 (1985). All parties agreed that this was an appropriate case for the granting of Summary Judgment. There were no genuine disputes with respect to any of the basic first-level facts. The only dispute was whether those facts, as a matter of law, justified a finding that the appellant-plaintiff, Ms. Blake, was barred from recovery against either defendant on the ground that she herself had been contributorily negligent.

A Three-Car Pile-Up: Tinker To Evers To Chance The accident itself was simply the final episode of a significantly longer chain of events. It is nevertheless the place to begin before we undertake our longer look backward. 3 The accident occurred in the northbound lanes of the Martin Luther King Boulevard, immediately north of the point where an exit ramp from MLK Boulevard leads up to eastbound traffic on Mulberry Street. At that point, there are three northbound lanes on the MLK, but no semblance of a shoulder to either the right or the left. The timing is also of critical significance.

The accident occurred on August 2, 2016 at approximately 4:30 P.M. That was at the height of the late-afternoon rush hour traffic when the congestion was literally bumper to bumper. The appellant, Ms. Blake, in Vehicle #3 (a minivan), was in the right-hand lane. Immediately after the point where she had passed the exit ramp up to Mulberry Street, the engine in her minivan overheated and her minivan came to a complete stop. Ms. Blake turned on her hazard lights and then placed a call to her auto repairman, who could only advise her to let the minivan cool off, notwithstanding the fact that she was sitting on center stage.

From the moment her minivan broke down through the conclusion of her call to her auto repairman, approximately two minutes elapsed. During those two minutes, Ms. Blake did not attempt to take herself or her two grandchildren, who were in the rear seat of the minivan, to a place of safety off the crowded roadway and onto the sidewalk. It was just as Ms. Blake was finishing her phone call to her auto repairman that Vehicle #2, a 2007 Mazda 6, operated by Defendant #2, Ms. Watkins, came crashing into her minivan. The right front side of the Mazda 6 crashed into the middle driver’s side door of the left side of the minivan. 4 Ms. Watkins had also been driving in the right lane when she noticed that Ms. Blake’s minivan had come to a full stop in the right lane in front of her.

In full control of her own vehicle, she also came to a full stop and waited. She waited until the middle lane, immediately to her left, had cleared of traffic before she moved out into that lane in order to drive around Ms. Blake’s stalled vehicle. In her deposition, she had testified: I could see a car that was stalled up ahead of me. I stopped well before I got to the car, because there were cars going past in the other lane.

I waited until it was clear, looked out the window just to see that it was clear, got into the middle lane, my car was hit by the truck. It was pushed into the van that was stalled. The truck kept going and it hit a tree on the right side. (Emphasis supplied.) It was at that point that Vehicle #1, the 4 by 4 pickup truck driven by Mr. Chadwick and owned by the City of Baltimore came crashing into Ms. Watkins’ Mazda in the middle of the center lane.1 Just as Ms. Watkins was moving from the right-hand lane into the middle lane, Mr. Chadwick, driving the City truck, was moving from the left-hand lane into the same middle lane.

It was virtually a simultaneous attempted merger. In his deposition, Mr. Chadwick described the collision: At the time I was traveling north on Martin Luther King. Coming up to Martin Luther King and Mulberry Street I could see a disabled vehicle in the first lane past Mulberry Street. Traveling past, going past I was in between Mulberry and Franklin Street.

About four cars was in front of me at the light. I get a call from dispatch saying that I have another emergency to go to, so I put my blinker on, my right blinker to get into the center lane. By it being heavy traffic I’m taking my time, I’m looking cautiously multiple times into the center lane, so I could have clear path to 1 Or, perhaps, it was the case that Ms. Watkins’ Mazda came crashing into Mr. Chadwick’s pickup truck. Or, perhaps, it was the case that each came crashing into the other.

In any event, the nuances of that collision in the center lane is another case entirely. 5 maneuver into the center lane. As I maneuver into the center lane I saw a clear path. Excuse me, I saw a clear path, so I went to go to maneuver into the center lane. I pushed on the gas so I can get into the center lane and I heard a loud crash.

I lost control of the vehicle and I went up top of the curb into a tree. (Emphasis supplied.) Mr. Chadwick explained that as his truck and Ms. Watkins’ Mazda essentially merged into the same space, the Mazda had hit his truck “in the middle of the rear tire.” From the points of impact on the respective vehicles, it appeared that in the race for the middle lane, Mr. Chadwick in his truck enjoyed a half a length lead over Ms. Watkins in her Mazda. It was that collision between Vehicle #1 and Vehicle #2 that propelled Vehicle #2 into its collision with Vehicle #3, Ms. Blake’s stalled minivan. The trifecta was complete.

Ms. Blake filed suit against both Mr. Chadwick and Ms. Watkins. Both of those defendants, in turn, moved for Summary Judgment, claiming that Ms. Blake had been guilty of contributory negligence. Summary Judgment was entered in favor of both defendants, as the trial court ruled that Ms. Blake had, indeed, been guilty of contributory negligence. Generic Negligence vs. Contributory Negligence With three disabled vehicles sitting in or near the Martin Luther King Boulevard, we turn our attention backward to the hours (or days) preceding the three-car collision.

It was the defense of both defendants that it had been the contributory negligence of the Plaintiff that was responsible for the accident. They claimed that but for her negligence in driving a disabled vehicle, which could stall at any time, into crowded rush-hour traffic, the ensuing collision would never have occurred. The defendants may, however, be guilty of the leap of logic that casually assumes that negligence on the part of a plaintiff is 6 necessarily contributory negligence on the part of a plaintiff. To qualify as contributory negligence, it is not enough for negligence to exist.

It must actively contribute. Deferring for the moment, however, the significantly more complicated question of whether the appellant was contributorily negligent, we will examine first the constituent question of whether the Plaintiff’s pre-accident behavior may have amounted to negligence generally. Two days prior to the accident of August 2, 2016, the appellant learned, from firsthand experience, that her minivan had a faulty radiator that was subject to overheating. The temperature gauge rose to “H.” Steam began emanating from the car radiator and the car came to an abrupt stop.

It would not start up again until the radiator had had the chance to cool down. After that stalling experience, the appellant consulted with “Andre,” her auto mechanic, who informed her that she needed a new radiator. Unfortunately, Andre, whose garage is in East Baltimore close to the appellant’s home at 610 East North Avenue, did not have a new radiator available and it was arranged that the appellant would purchase a radiator from Advance Auto Parts in the Westside Shopping Center in West Baltimore. The appellant set out to get her new radiator on Tuesday, August 2, 2016.

It was a hot and sunny August day. Instead of choosing an early morning departure or an evening departure so as to alleviate the overheating problem, the appellant set out in midafternoon. She took her two grandchildren with her in the back of her minivan. Her destination in the Westside Shopping Center was all the way across Baltimore from her home on East North Avenue.

She chose to take a chance by driving her minivan instead of taking a cab or arranging for a friend to take her to West Baltimore. 7 Advance Auto Parts sold a new radiator to the appellant but informed her that they did not install new radiators. The appellant picked up the radiator and set out to cross Baltimore again in her minivan so that the new radiator could be installed by her own mechanic, Andre, at his shop in East Baltimore. Notwithstanding her knowledge that if her limo overheated and stalled, her only immediate recourse was to sit and wait for the radiator to cool down, the appellant chose a precarious route back to East Baltimore. Instead of “inching” her way across Baltimore on more leisurely side streets, where parking lanes or at least shoulders might have offered some asylum in an emergency, the appellant committed herself to the shoulderless mercy of the Martin Luther King Boulevard at 4 P.M., the heart of the late afternoon rush hour on a business day.

Even at the last minute, an exit onto Mulberry Street would have offered some relative amelioration of danger but the appellant chose not to take it. The fact that her minivan stalled and completely blocked one of the lanes of bumper to bumper traffic was virtually inevitable. Even then, the appellant chose to sit in place for two high-risk minutes, as she called her mechanic, rather than get herself and her two grandchildren out of the car and onto the relative safety of the adjacent sidewalk. In a Memorandum accompanying the grant of Summary Judgment in favor of the two defendants, the trial court found and ruled: Here, Plaintiff Blake was contributorily negligent when she drove a vehicle that she knew was in an unsafe condition during rush hour traffic.

Under the Md. Code Ann., Trans. Section 22-101(a)(1), Plaintiff Blake was forbidden to drive the vehicle which she knew was in an unsafe condition to operate. §22-101(a)(1)(i)-(ii). When Plaintiff Blake had last driven her car on July 31, 2016, two days before this 8 accident, the car stopped suddenly in the roadway when the engine overheated due to her broken radiator. Def.

Ex. 1, Blake Dep. 28:12-15. Despite knowing her car would stop due to an overheating radiator, Plaintiff Blake chose to drive the car on a hot summer day at 4:00 p.m. during heavy rush hour traffic with two minor passengers. Further, Plaintiff Blake still decided to go to Advance Auto to pick up a new radiator at Westside Shopping Center with the intention of driving the vehicle back to her mechanic across town in East Baltimore. Thus, Plaintiff Blake was contributorily negligent as she knew the radiator did not work yet chose to drive across town with a broken radiator, had reason to anticipate that the car would overheat and stall the engine again, and chose to leave the vehicle stopped in the roadway.

(Emphasis supplied.) Looking at appellant’s behavior in a vacuum, we would fully agree with the trial court and with both defendants that the appellant’s behavior was, as an abstract matter, dangerously negligent. Our agreement thus far, however, simply brings us to the point where we must compare generic negligence, as an abstraction, with contributory negligence in the context of a particular event. Proximate Causation In and of itself, negligence is not enough. In Rosenthal v. Mueller, 124 Md. App. 170, 171 , 720 A.2d. 1264 (1998), this Court was very emphatic about the difference between generic negligence and contributory negligence: This appeal turns on a simple principle.

With respect to the legal phenomenon of “contributory negligence,” the limiting adjective “contributory” is just as significant and just as necessary an element as is the noun “negligence.” Untold thousands of acts of negligence, as purely abstract phenomena, go regularly unnoticed and are legally inconsequential unless they actually contribute to some adverse result. (Emphasis supplied.) In Troxel v. Iguana Cantina, LLC, 201 Md. App. 476, 504 , 29 A.3d 1038 (2011), Judge Kehoe explained for this Court: 9 It is a basic principle that “negligence is not actionable unless it is a proximate cause of the harm alleged…To be a proximate cause of an injury, the negligence must be 1) a cause in fact, and 2) a legally cognizable cause. (Emphasis supplied.) In Batten v. Michel, 15 Md. App. 646, 652 , 292 A.2d 707 (1972), this Court made it “black-letter” clear that unless negligence is a proximate cause of an accident, it, by definition, cannot be contributory: Contributory negligence, if present, defeats recovery because it is a proximate cause of the accident; otherwise the negligence is not contributory. (Emphasis supplied.) As early as Friedman v. Hendler Creamery Co., 158 Md. 131, 148 , 148 A. 426 (1930), the Court of Appeals has been making precisely that same point: Assuming, for the purpose of the question only, that these facts did show that plaintiff was negligent as a matter of law, yet unless such negligence was the direct and proximate cause of the accident, it would not bar her right to recover.

(Emphasis supplied.) Judge Raker wrote for the Court of Appeals in Pittway Corporation v. Collins, 409 Md. 218, 244 , 973 A.2d 771 (2009), in explaining