Clark v. Junkins

Hammond, C. J., delivered the opinion of the Court. The appellant, Mrs. Clark, the plaintiff below, had allowed her son Christopher to use her automobile for purposes of his own on the afternoon of November 25, 1964. While driving to pick up a friend, Christopher slid the car into the rear of a preceding car which had stopped preparatory to making a right turn into a private driveway. At the conclusion of the testimony for Mrs. Clark, Judge Moorman took the case from the jury, ruling as a matter of law that there had been no sufficient evidence of primary negligence, that the presumption that Christopher was his mother’s agent had been rebutted and, unnecessarily and anomalously, that Christopher had been contributorily negligent.

Christopher testified that he observed the car of the defendant, Junkins, at the end of a line of cars which had stopped at a traffic light, that he slowed to about sixteen miles an hour and then, after the light turned green, as the cars in front of him proceeded up a grade, he began to accelerate and had reached a speed of about twenty-two miles an hour when he saw that the Junkins car, without warning of any kind — by hand or mechanical means or by the showing of a brake light — ■ had suddenly stopped in front of him. He immediately applied his brakes but because the streets were wet from rain, his car slid into the rear of the defendant’s car. Another witness testified that he saw the Junkins car stop suddenly and saw Chris ¹⁰⁶ topher’s car slide into it. Junkins told the investigating police officer that he had intended to turn right into a private driveway, that as he approached the driveway a car was coming out of it into the roadway, that he stopped to allow the car to come out, and then was struck.

He admitted both to the officer and to Christopher that he had given no signal of any kind of his intention to make a turn. We think Judge Moorman erred in his rulings. “The general rule in Maryland is that where motor vehicles are traveling in the same direction there exist duties incumbent upon both drivers. The driver to the rear has a duty to exercise reasonable and ordinary care to avoid injury to the vehicle in front of him. However, the driver in the vehicle ahead also must exercise the same degree of care to avoid injury to the vehicle behind him.

And the degree of care incumbent on the driver to the rear to avoid colliding with the vehicle ahead is not susceptible of precise formulation, but must depend on the facts and circumstances of each particular situation.” Bernardi v. Roedel, 225 Md. 17, 22 . As in Bernardi, the circumstances in the case before us “do not compel one conclusion only, i. e., that * * * the driver of the front vehicle was not guilty of any negligence in the bringing of his vehicle to a halt. Consequently that question was for the jury to resolve, and they could have concluded that appellant stopped too suddenly for appellee to avoid the collision.” Code (1957),