Jekofsky v. State Roads Commission

• Decision Date: 10 February 1972
• Docket Number: No. 218,218
• Citation: 264 Md. 471,287 A.2d 40
• Parties: Charles S. JEKOFSKY v. STATE ROADS COMMISSION et al.
• Court: Maryland Court of Appeals

Page 471

264 Md. 471

287 A.2d 40

Charles S. JEKOFSKY v. STATE ROADS COMMISSION et al.

No. 218.

Court of Appeals of Maryland.

Feb. 10, 1972.

Manuel Auerbach, Washington, D. C., for appellant.

Frank W. Wilson, Sp. Atty., Rockville (Francis B. Burch, Atty. Gen. and Nolan H. Rogers, Sp. Asst. Atty. Gen., Baltimore, on the brief), for appellees.

Argued before HAMMOND, C. J., and BARNES, SINGLEY, SMITH and DIGGES, JJ.

BARNES, Judge.

The appellant, Charles S. Jekofsky, who was the plaintiff below, urges upon us that we should now overrule our prior holdings sustaining the doctrine of sovereign immunity in Maryland.

The declaration avers that Mr. Jekofsky, on August 23, 1967, was driving an automobile on Interstate 495 in Montgomery County. In the vicinity of Exit 17, while proceeding in an easterly direction and while exercising due care, his automobile was caused 'to fly out of control' and to strike a steel pole on the side of the road, causing him permanent injuries. The proximate cause of this accident, he avers, was the negligence of the State Roads Commission (now the State Highway Administration of the Department of Transportation), to which reference will be made in this opinion as 'the Commission,' in 'its improper planning of the road; improper specifications as to grade, material and use thereof; and knowledge over a long period of time of the defects in planning and construction and maintenance and the dangerous condition of the road, and its failure to take corrective action or to warn the public of the inherently dangerous condition of the road at the site of the accident.' The plaintiff claimed $250,000 in damages against the State of Maryland and the Commission.

The State and the Commission filed a Motion Raising a Preliminary Objection pursuant to Maryland Rule 323 b and moved for judgment in its favor on the ground that the State of Maryland has sovereign immunity and the Commission as an agency of the State also has sovereign immunity against the action and have not consented to the filing of the action or otherwise waived their immunity.

The Circuit Court for Montgomery County (H. Ralph Miller, J.) on July 16, 1971, granted the motion of the State and the Commission and this appeal followed in regular course. We will affirm.

The attack upon the doctrine of sovereign immunity in this Court, as well as the highest Courts of other jurisdictions, has been frequent during the past several years and with increasing vigor. We fully considered both these attacks and our prior decisions in Godwin v. County Commissioners of St. Mary's County, 256 Md. 326, 260 A.2d 295 (1970) in which we declined to overrule our prior decisions sustaining the doctrine. We cited with approval the decision of our predecessors in State v. Rich, 126 Md. 643, 95 A. 956 (1915) in which the sovereign immunity of the State in tort was held to apply to the State Roads Commission. Cf. Duncan v. Koustenis, 260 Md. 98, 271 A.2d 547 (1970) where we declined to extend the doctrine of sovereign immunity in tort to...