Stewart v. Hechinger Stores Company

WENNER, Judge. Appellant, Rose D. Stewart, appeals from a judgment of the Circuit Court for Prince George’s County entered in favor of appellee, Hechinger Stores Company (Hechingers). On appeal, appellant presents us with the following issues, which we have condensed and slightly reworded for both brevity and clarity: I. Whether the trial court abused its discretion in failing to exercise its power to revise the judgment and strike the jury’s decision that appellant was contributorily negligent.

II

Whether Maryland’s common law doctrine of contributory negligence should be replaced by pure comparative negligence? Finding no error, we shall affirm the judgment of the circuit court. FACTS According to the evidence produced at trial, on 14 September 1991, appellant and her two sons were shopping at Hechingers in Rockville, Maryland. While her sons were having several keys duplicated, appellant continued shopping near the front of the store.

When she noticed an employee of Hechingers pulling a “train” of merchandise carts into the store, she ³⁵⁷ quickly stepped back, fell over a box protruding from the bottom of a display stand, and suffered severe injuries. Appellant contends that it was necessary for her to step back, in order to avoid being struck by the “train” of merchandise carts. Exactly how this “train” of merchandise carts was being brought into the store, and whether it was necessary for appellant to step back to avoid being struck is the principal factual dispute here before us. At various times, appellant has said she was forced to jump back to avoid being hit by the carts, because they were bearing down on her.

She has also said the carts were so laden with merchandise that she could not be seen by the Hechingers employee moving them. According to Hechingers’ employee, he was slowly pulling the carts around a corner, he and appellant looked directly at one another, and appellant was in no danger of being struck by the carts. Appellant subsequently filed a complaint in the Circuit Court for Prince George’s County charging Hechingers with negligence, and seeking damages for the injuries sustained by her from the fall. After a three day trial, the jury found that Hechingers had been negligent, and that appellant had been contributorily negligent, resulting in a judgment for Hechingers.

Acting pro se, appellant noted an appeal, which we determined to be a motion asking the trial court to exercise its revisory power, pursuant to Md. Rule 2-535. Accordingly, we dismissed the appeal and remanded the case to the circuit court, directing it to consider appellant’s motion for reconsideration. The motion was denied following a hearing, and appellant has again noted an appeal. I. “An appeal from the denial of a motion asking the court to exercise its revisory power is not necessarily the same as an appeal from the judgment itself.

Rather, the standard of review is whether the trial court abused its discretion in declining to revise the judgment.” Blitz v. Beth Isaac, 115 Md.App. 460, n. 4 , 694 A.2d 107 (1997), cert. granted, 347 Md. ³⁵⁸ 155, 699 A.2d 1169 (1997). With this in mind, we now turn to the issues presently before us. As the Court of Appeals said in Haskell v. Carey, 294 Md. 550, 558 , 451 A.2d 658 (1982), “the purpose of authorizing a trial court to exercise broad discretion to revise unenrolled judgments is to assure that technicality does not triumph over justice.” According to appellant, the jury’s finding her to have been contributorily negligent is a technicality triumphing over justice. She believes the trial court not only erred in submitting the question of contributory negligence to the jury, but abused its discretion in declining to grant her motion to revise the judgment.

Appellant relies on both Sanders v. Williams, 209 Md. 149 , 120 A.2d 397 (1956), and Schwarz v. Hathaway, 82 Md.App. 87 , 570 A.2d 348 (1990). Unfortunately for appellant, her reliance on Sanders and Schwarz is misplaced. To be sure, in both Sanders and Schwarz the trial court was found to have erred in submitting the issue of contributory negligence to the jury. In both Sanders and