Baltimore Import Car Service & Storage, Inc. v. Maryland Port Authority

• Decision Date: 03 June 1970
• Docket Number: No. 391,391
• Parties: BALTIMORE IMPORT CAR SERVICE AND STORAGE, INC. v. MARYLAND PORT AUTHORITY et al.
• Court: Maryland Court of Appeals

Page 335

258 Md. 335

265 A.2d 866

BALTIMORE IMPORT CAR SERVICE AND STORAGE, INC. v. MARYLAND PORT AUTHORITY et al.

No. 391.

Court of Appeals of Maryland.

June 3, 1970.

Wilbur D. Preston, Jr., Baltimore (B. Ford Davis, Robert M. Wright, William B. Whiteford, and Whiteford, Taylor, Preston, Trimble & Johnston, Baltimore, on the brief), for appellant.

S. Leonard Rottman, Spec. Asst. Atty. Gen., (Francis B. Burch, Atty. Gen., on the brief) for Maryland Port Authority et al., part of appellees; by George Cochran Doub, Baltimore (Zelig Robinson, John J. Ghingher, III, and Weinberg & Green, Baltimore, on the brief), for R. G. Hobelmann & Co., Inc. et al., other appellees.

Argued Before HAMMOND, C. J., and McWILLIAMS, FINAN, SINGLEY, SMITH and DIGGES, JJ.

SINGLEY, Judge.

Maryland Port Authority (the Authority) is a 'body politic and corporate,' established by the General Assembly in 1956, Maryland Code, 1957 (1968 Repl.Vol.) Art. 62B (the Act). Among the powers with which the Authority is vested by § 5 of the Act are the powers:

'(f) * * * To acquire, construct, reconstruct, rehabilitate, improve, maintain, lease as lessor or as lessee, repair and operate port facilities within its territorial jurisdiction, including the dredging of ship channels and turning basins and the filling and grading of land therefor, and to establish reasonable rules and regulations for the use of any project which are not inconsistent with the provisions of this article or any other applicable law of the State of Maryland;'

'(o) * * * To employ * * * managers, clerks, stenographers, laborers, and such other agents and employees as may be necessary in its judgment; * * *.'

One of the Authority's most successful enterprises is the Dundalk Marine Terminal (the Terminal), where there is located a facility which appellant says was especially designed to handle the importation of foreign cars. At argument we were told that as a result of its favorable location and exceptional facilities, the car import facility had become the largest in the United States, handling more than 200,000 cars each year.

Baltimore Import Car Service and Storage, Inc., (Baltimore Import), an importer of foreign cars, became convinced that as a consequence of certain leases and a series of exclusive contractural arrangements which commenced in 1960, the car import facility at the Terminal had become the private fief of R. G. Hobelmann & Co., Inc. (Hobelmann), also an importer of foreign cars, and Dockside Storage Company, Inc. (Dockside), alleged to be under common ownership with Hobelmann. In April of 1968, Baltimore Import filed a petition for declaratory relief in the Circuit Court of Baltimore City under the Uniform Declaratory Judgments Act, Code, Art. 31A, against the Authority, Hobelmann, Dockside, the executive director of the Authority, the deputy director of the Authority and the president and alleged controlling stockholder of Hobelmann and Dockside.

The bill prayed that the contractual arrangements between the Authority, Hobelmann and Dockside be declared void and against public policy; that the Authority be required to enter into negotiations looking toward a lease of a portion of the Terminal to Baltimore Import; that the Authority be required to employ persons having no interest in the Terminal facilities; and that Hobelmann and Dockside be required to remit to the Authority such monies as had been collected under the contractural arrangement and to account to Baltimore Import for such monies as had been collected from it. Hobelmann, Dockside and the president of those two companies demurred; the Authority and its director and deputy director moved to dismiss, alleging lack of jurisdiction. The chancellor (Joseph L. Carter, J.) entered an order which neither sustained the demurrer nor granted the motion to dismiss, but declared the agreement and leases which the Authority had entered into with Hobelmann and Dockside to be valid. From a judgment in favor of the defendants for costs, Baltimore Import has appealed.

In not ruling on the demurrer or the motion to dismiss, Judge Carter relied on our prior holdings that the granting of a demurrer is seldom appropriate in a declaratory action. As Judge (later Chief Judge) Prescott said for the Court in Shapiro v. Bd. of County Com'rs, 219 Md. 298, 301-303, 149 A.2d 396, 398 (1959):

'In actions for declaratory judgments or decrees, as in actions generally, a demurrer admits all of the alleged facts that are well pleaded. * * *'

'It should be borne in mind that a demurrer is rarely appropriate in a declaratory judgment action. Where a bill of complaint shows a subject matter that is within the contemplation of the relief afforded by the declaratory decree statute, and it states sufficient facts to show the existence of the subject matter and the dispute with reference thereto, upon which the court may exercise its declaratory power, it is immaterial that the ultimate ruling may be unfavorable to the plaintiff. The test of the sufficiency of the bill is not whether it shows that the plaintiff is entitled to the declaration of rights or interest in accordance with his theory, but whether he is entitled to a declaration at all; so, even though the plaintiff may be on the losing side of the dispute, if he states the existence of a controversy which should be settled, he states a cause of suit for a declaratory decree. (citation omitted)'

To the same effect is Myers v. Chief of Baltimore County Fire Bureau, 237 Md. 583, 590-591, 207 A.2d 467 (1965) and cases cited there; 22 Am.Jur.2d Declaratory Judgments § 91 (1965) at 955.

In Hunt v. Montgomery County, 248 Md. 403, 237 A.2d 35 (1968), where a bill for declaratory relief was heard on demurrer by agreement of the parties, and a declaratory decree was entered declaring the rights of the parties and entering judgment for the defendants without ruling on the demurrer, we noted that since there was no genuine dispute of fact and as the answer to the contentions turned solely on questions of law, the declaration entered by the court could be treated as a summary judgment under Rule 610 a.

The posture of the case before us is somewhat different from that of Hunt. The facts set forth in the petition allege a controversy justiciable under declaratory judgment procedure. Baltimore Import says, and we think quite rightly, that it need not allege all the facts on which it relies, but only such facts as may be necessary to support its prayer for relief. As we said in Smith v. Shiebeck, 180 Md. 412, 420, 24 A.2d 795, 800 (1942):

'* * * The material facts essential to the complainant's right to obtain relief should be alleged, but a general statement of the facts is sufficient. It is not necessary to state minutely all the circumstances which may conduce to prove the general charge, as these circumstances are properly matters of evidence which need not be recited to enable them to be admitted as proof (citing cases). Even though every particular circumstance is not stated, the bill will be held sufficient if it states the complaint with reasonable certainty, clearness and accuracy so as to apprise the defendant of the nature of the claim brought against him.'

See also Maryland Rule 370 a 2. Hobelmann's responsive pleading, although called a demurrer, sometimes sounds like an answer. For example, paragraph 9 says:

'In carrying out its responsibility in the performance of its governmental functions by 'developing existing facilities to provide quicker, cheaper and more effective handling of cargoes' * * * by executing the Agreement and Leases with Hobelmann, Inc. and Dockside, the Authority has necessarily determined as a matter of sound public policy that the Agreement and Leases were in the public interest and thus that there be a single contractor for the handling and servicing of imported automobiles at the Terminal. The Authority has also necessarily determined that terminal services are preferably performed with greater efficiency by a single contractor and that, if more than one contractor was engaged to render the same or overlapping terminal services within the limited available space at the Terminal there would ensue confusion, if not chaos. It must be necessarily assumed that the leasing of space to Hobelmann, Inc. and Dockside was done pursuant to official decisions of the Authority in the exercise of its public responsibility and the determination of the Authority that such lease arrangements were in the public interest. It must also necessarily be assumed that the Authority has declined to rent space to Petitioner in the Terminal or in its newly acquired tract of land adjoining the Terminal because the Authority has deemed that such a lease would not be in the public interest.'

This can scarcely be read as an admission of well pleaded facts.

The gravamen of Baltimore Import's petition is that the Authority under an agreement of 1 January 1967, entitled 'Agency Agreement between Maryland Port Authority and R. G. Hobelmann & Company, Inc.', had constituted Hobelmann its exclusive agent for the handling of foreign automobiles; that under its agreement with the Authority, Hobelmann, acting as agent for the Authority, receives 75cents of a charge of $1.45 imposed by the Authority on each vehicle moving through the Terminal except privately owned cars for which it receives $5.00; that this amounts to more that $100,000 per year and compensates Hobelmann for performing purely ministerial duties which could be as well performed by employees of the Authority. The petition also alleges that the $1.45 charge entitles the importer to five days' storage of a car in a so-called 'transit area'; and that after five days, an additional charge is imposed on the import agent by Hobelmann, who...