Harlow v. Blocher

Hammond, C. J., delivered the opinion of the Court. We have here a case in which the suit below may have been instituted too late but the appeal certainly was taken too soon. As a result of a two-car collision on April 15, 1966, the driver of one car died and the passenger in that car suffered severe injuries. An administrator of the driver’s estate was appointed on September 9, 1966, and the passenger sued the administrator and the driver and the owner of the other car.

The suit was filed on February 14, 1969, two years and ten months after the accident and some two years and five months after the qualification of the administrator. Code (1957), Art. 93, § 112, as it read before June 1966, in parts here pertinent, authorized suit against the estate of a decedent with the proviso that an action for injuries to the person must be brought “within six calendar months after the date of the qualification of the executor or administrator of the testator or intestate.” By Ch. 642 of the Laws of 1966, effective June 1, 1966, the legislature amended § 112 to provide, among other things, that in the event the deceased was covered by an insurance policy suit could be instituted “after the expiration of six months but within the statute of limitation” (the recovery to be limited to the amount of the available insurance) . Since, in the present case, the accident occurred before June 1, 1966, and the administrator qualified after that date and suit was filed after six months from the time of qualification, but within three years thereof, an important issue became whether suit had been timely filed. Another issue became whether the claim agents of the deceased driver’s insurance company and the claim agents of the insurer of the driver and the owner of the other ³ car had effectively waived the need to timely file suit and were estopped to claim that it had been filed late.

The administrator moved for a summary judgment. Judge Levine on July 7, 1969, pursuant to Maryland Rule 610, ordered: “that the said Motion for Summary Judgment be, and the same is hereby, partially granted to the extent that Article 93, Section 112 of the Annotated Code of Maryland, as it existed prior to June 1, 1966, is controlling in this case on the issue of whether the action was brought timely; and it is further “ORDERED, that pursuant to Maryland