Plaintiff Attorney Legal Information CenterContributory Negligence
In Maryland, we adhere to an old common law rule we inherited from the British called contributory negligence. Abandoned in all but four states, the rule states that “any” negligence on the part of the plaintiff will completely bar a recovery. As applied to auto accident cases, it means that if a plaintiff contributed to the auto accident in any way, no matter how slight, he or she cannot recover money through the courts from other parties that may have been chiefly responsible, even if the plaintiff is only 1% at fault. In the above example, this means Driver C gets nothing even though Driver A and Driver B caused 90% of his injuries. Of course, this is patently unjust, but there has been little inertia since 2001 in the Maryland legislature for reconsidering this archaic rule (State Treasurer Richard Dixon testified before the Maryland legislature that it would put additional “burdens” on Maryland’s insurance system… ignoring the burdens placed on accident victims). In 2013, the Maryland Supreme Court specifically declined — over a vigorous dissent — to overturn contributory negligence.
Accordingly, when defending a personal injury lawsuit in Maryland, defense lawyers often seek to argue that the Plaintiff was contributorily negligent. The problem for defense lawyers is that most accidents are relatively cut and dry, and the answer is black and white: someone is 100% at fault for the accident. But defense lawyers in personal injury cases fight to try to find something that a jury might believe, often trying to make as many arguments as they can, hoping that one argument will stick with the jury.
Naturally, one of the easiest things to argue is that the plaintiff was driving too fast and that the speed of the plaintiff’s vehicle was a contributory cause of the car accident. Specifically, defense counsel often attempts to argue that this Plaintiff was driving at a speed such that he would not have been in that place had he been driving at the appropriate speed. The critical question in Myers v. Bright is whether vehicle speed can be the proximate cause of a collision when the Plaintiff’s car was where it was entitled to be and the driver would not have had sufficient time to avoid the collision had he been driving at a lawful speed.
Why Insurance Companies Love the Speeding Argument
Insurance companies frequently argue that the injured driver was speeding. They do this because Maryland’s contributory negligence rule gives them a powerful defense. If they can convince a jury that the plaintiff was even slightly responsible for the accident, the claim can be barred completely.
Because of this rule, insurers often raise speeding even when the evidence is weak or speculative. The argument is simple: if the plaintiff had been driving more slowly, the crash might not have happened or might have been avoided. Sometimes that argument has merit. But in many cases, it is little more than guesswork.
Defense lawyers know that contributory negligence only requires a small amount of fault. That means they do not have to prove that speeding was the main cause of the accident. They only need to persuade a jury that the plaintiff’s speed played some role in the collision.
In many crashes, however, the real cause is another driver who failed to yield, ran a red light, or entered the roadway when it was unsafe. When that happens, speculation about speed is not enough. Maryland courts have repeatedly held that there must be actual evidence that the plaintiff’s speed contributed to the crash before the issue can even go to a jury.
Myers v. Bright
In this case, Plaintiff was the injured driver in a car accident. The Plaintiff was driving in the right-hand southbound lane, which was for through traffic, on U.S. Route 11 in Hagerstown, Maryland. The lane to Plaintiff’s left was for vehicles turning left at an intersection further down the highway. On Plaintiff’s right was a Burger King restaurant that had an entrance onto the highway. The cars to her left stopped waiting to turn left at the intersection approximately 50 feet past the Burger King.
Driving northbound on Route 11, Defendant attempted to turn left into the Burger King. This maneuver required Defendant to cut through the line of vehicles in the left turn lane and then cross the southbound lane of traffic. Among the southbound vehicles waiting to turn left was a pickup truck just north of the Burger King entrance. The driver of the pickup truck motioned to Bright to go ahead and turn in front of him. The defendant tried to turn left across both southbound lanes and into Burger King’s parking lot and hit Plaintiff’s car. Plaintiff testified at trial that she saw Defendant’s vehicle emerging from in front of the pickup a split second before the crash. The plaintiff said that there was no way for her to avoid the accident.
The plaintiff filed a lawsuit against the defendant driver. Now retired Judge Frederick C. Wright in Washington County entered judgment for the plaintiff (Plaintiff prevailed as a matter of law), and the jury awarded her $30,000. The Maryland Court of Special Appeals, however, reversed Judge Wright’s ruling. But the Maryland Court of Appeals disagreed and essentially reinstated Judge Wright’s ruling that Defendant was negligent as a matter of law and Plaintiff was not contributorily negligent.
The opinion in Myers v. Bright was written by Maryland Supreme Court Judge Howard Chasanow. The opinion clearly articulates why speed rarely leads to a finding of contributory negligence. The court found that the defendant, having failed to yield the right of way to the plaintiff while making a left turn, was negligent as a matter of law and that the Plaintiff’s speed had not impeded her ability to avoid the auto accident. Finally, the court held that because there was no evidence that the plaintiff’s speed was a proximate cause of the car crash, she was not contributorily negligent for the accident. Judge Chasanow’s opinion noted that the court does not condone speeding and recognizes that there are criminal penalties for violating Section 21-311, but that does not make the conduct a contributing cause of an accident.