Hensley v. Pirzchalski

Hammond, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. A good Samaritan, injured while pushing a stalled automobile to start it, feels that the trial court treated him shabbily in directing a verdict at the end of his case against the owner of the car. We agree with the court below that reasonable minds would not unite in finding that the defendant violated any duty owed the plaintiff. At the request of a mutual friend, the appellant Hensley drove the appellee, Pirzchalski, to where the latter owner’s car was standing on a Baltimore street with its battery dead.

The car was parallel with the curb, facing up a slight grade. About six or eight feet downgrade from the rear of the car was an alley, the entrance to which flared at its juncture with the, street so that the entrance was wider than the body of the-alley. Pirzchalski went to the driver’s side, opened the door and took hold of the steering wheel with one hand. Hensley went to the front of the car, grasped the underside of the-bumper with his knuckles toward the ground, put his upper-arms and shoulders against the grill, turned his head to the-left facing the pavement, and pushed with a lifting effort.

The car went slowly downgrade for six or eight feet, and. then Hensley says: “* * * the front of the car wheeled out in the street from the curb * * * and * * * throwed me off balance.” He fell against the radiator of the car and injured his chest. After he struck the car, he raised his head, over the hood and saw that Pirzchalski had turned the wheel to guide the car into the alley. Hensley continued to hold ⁴⁷³ onto and push the car until it came to rest with half its length in the alley. He then went behind the car and pushed it down the street until it started.

Hensley says that Pirzchalski asked him if he could push the car back and get it started, his understanding being that “We was going to push the car all the way back and get it started”, but he admitted that he did not know which way the car was to go or would go, because he had no discussion whatever about it with Pirzchalski. Apparently, no conversation took place after the car stopped in the alley before Hensley went to the rear and began pushing it out into the street. We fail to see that Pirzchalski owed Hensley any duty to warn him, as Hensley claims he should have, that he was about to turn the wheel of the car. No inference necessarily arises that Hensley should not have expected that the car would be guided into the alley by Pirzchalski because the latter said only that the car was to be pushed backward.

The turn into the alley was at least as much to be expected as the continuance of a straight course. Pirzchalski was entitled to act on the belief that Hensley would anticipate various movements of the car as it went backwards since the grasping of the steering wheel was notice that the car might well be steered in deviation from a straight course. There were introduced into evidence pictures showing a car in the position the car in question was when the pushing began. As the trial court noted in his opinion, it is impossible to escape the conclusion from the testimony and the pictures that a maneuver fully to be expected under the circumstances was the one that took place — the backing of the car into the alley and then the forward push.

Since this solution of the problem required the turning of the wheel in exactly the manner in which Pirzchalski turned it, and there was no understanding or agreement, express or implied, that