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Fouche v. Masters10/16/1980
In this automobile negligence case arising out of a head-on collision, a jury awarded $50,000 damages to an injured passenger against both the host driver and the personal representative of the driver of the second car who died of injuries sustained in the crash. On appeal, the host driver maintains that the trial court (Barrick, J.) erred in overruling his motion for a directed verdict because (a) he was faced with an emergency and there was no evidence that he failed to exercise due care and (b) the testimony of the plaintiff passenger exonerated him. The personal representative presents a single issue: that the trial court erred in reading Md. Transp. Code Ann. § 21-902 (a) (Driving while intoxicated) and § 21-902 (b) (Driving while ability impaired by alcohol) as part of its jury instructions.
I
The relevant facts are largely undisputed. On June 3, 1978, appellee, Ruth Arlene Masters, 53, a widowed schoolteacher, and appellant, Noble Benjamin Ridings, Jr., a friend and companion of some fifteen years, had a dinner date in Thurmont, Maryland. Shortly after 8:00 p.m., they left the restaurant and proceeded to drive south on U.S.
Route 15 in Ridings' Chrysler with Ridings behind the wheel. Masters testified that although it was not quite dark, " t was misty -- it hadn't started to rain yet, just a dreary evening." Route 15 was a 24-foot wide, two-lane highway divided by a painted center line which permitted one lane of traffic to travel in each direction. Adjoining each lane was a 12 foot asphalt shoulder thus extending the width of the highway to a total of 48 feet. On the evening in question, traffic was light.
The appellee, Masters, testified that she observed the headlights of an oncoming car in their southbound lane about 100 to 125 feet away. When questioned about the car approaching in their own lane Masters responded, "I'm positive. I have nightmares about that yet, I see those lights coming at us." Masters also testified that the driver of the approaching vehicle, appellant Fouche's decedent, James Wilson Fouche, Jr., age 21 (hereinafter "Fouche"), was slumped over the wheel and shortly before impact, raised his head and steered his car back into the northbound lane. Ridings, in his testimony, said that he was proceeding at about fifty miles per hour when he first saw the Fouche vehicle and that its speed was about the same. He removed his foot from the accelerator and watched to "see what he was going to do." He then described the final tragic moment: "Then I saw he wasn't going to go back in his lane so I swerved over, I turned over in the left lane, and at the same instant I did that, the other driver did the same thing." When asked why he (Ridings) didn't swerve to the right instead of the left, Ridings responded: " idn't think about it."
A Maryland State trooper, who investigated the accident shortly thereafter, testified that the point of impact was approximately 3 1/2 feet east of the center line in the northbound lane. Contact was made between the left-front section of each vehicle. He also testified that upon arriving at the scene, Fouche's vehicle was partially in the northbound lane and partially on the shoulder adjoining that lane. The Ridings vehicle was straddling the center line facing in a southeasterly direction. A gouge mark in the
pavement appeared in the northbound lane and a set of skid marks extended from the southbound lane into the northbound lane.
James Wilson Fouche, Jr., driver of the northbound automobile, a Ford Mustang, was critically injured in the accident and died in the Emergency Room of the Washington County Hospital within three hours. Both Ridings and Masters were inju
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