Broadwater v. Dorsey11/6/1995
A jury in the Circuit Court for Baltimore County found that, in February, 1992, appellants, Ronald and Eleanor Broadwater, had negligently entrusted an automobile to their adult son, Ronald Broadwater, Jr., and that, on October 2, 1992, Ronald, Jr. negligently drove that vehicle on a public highway and caused injury to appellee, Matilda Dorsey. The jury awarded damages of $556,000 to Ms. Dorsey and her husband. From the judgment entered on that verdict, appellants have appealed, complaining that the court erred in failing to conclude as a matter of law that there was no liability for negligent entrustment. We shall affirm.
THE FACTS
Because appellants are urging an entitlement to judgment as a matter of law, we need to examine the evidence in a light most favorable to the Dorseys. We shall give scant attention, therefore, to the evidence supporting the defense that the jury had a right to reject and that it implicitly did reject.
In November, 1990, appellants owned or had in their possession five cars, all insured by State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Company -- a 1986 Mercedes, a 1988 Toyota, a 1990 Plymouth Laser, a 1956 Ford Thunderbird, and a 1988 Corvette. The Ford and the Corvette, they contended, were not driven.
Ronald, Jr. was, to say the least, not a highly motivated person. He was born in June, 1965, and thus, by November, 1990, was 25 years old. After graduating high school in 1984 or 1985 (when he was 19 or 20), he attended three different colleges for varying periods but, despite five or six years of effort, had not graduated from any of them and had not even earned sufficient credits for an AA degree. Except for a brief period when he lived in an apartment paid for by his parents while he was attending one of the colleges, he lived at home or stayed with friends. Although he worked part-time for his father for a while (there is some conflict in the evidence as to whether he was paid for his services), he never had a steady, permanent job. He was almost totally supported by his parents.
Between August, 1982 and October, 1989, Ronald, Jr. amassed 10 points on his driving record, for seven separate incidents of failing to obey traffic signals or speeding. Mrs. Broadwater paid a number of fines for her son and also paid for an attorney to represent him on one or more occasions. In 1980, when he was 15, Ronald, Jr. was involved in a motorcycle accident, as a result of which, in 1983, Dr. Broadwater was sued for having negligently entrusted the motorcycle to his son. The case was apparently settled.
Beginning in November, 1990, and continuing through February, 1991, State Farm informed the Broadwaters that it would decline to renew the insurance on any of the five vehicles then owned by them unless Ronald, Jr. was excluded from the coverage. Those notices were each based on three recent violations by Ronald, Jr. - -speeding in April and October, 1989 and failing to obey a traffic signal in July, 1988 - -and one accident. In October, 1990, he ran into a concrete bridge. Although the Broadwaters initially protested these notices, they eventually acceded to State Farm's decision and, in August, 1991, signed an agreement excluding Ronald, Jr. from coverage.
The son's irresponsible conduct may, in part, be explained by the fact that he was a drug addict. On September 20, 1991, the Broadwaters filed a petition with the District Court for an emergency evaluation of Ronald, Jr. Although Dr. Broadwater claimed in his testimony that the evaluation was "so that he would be forced to have his bipolar mental problems straightened out," in the petition he and his wife noted that Ronald, Jr. had a history of drug abuse dati
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