White v. State

• Decision Date: 27 April 2011
• Docket Number: 2009.,Sept. Term,No. 36,36
• Citation: 419 Md. 265,19 A.3d 369
• Parties: Richard WHITEv.STATE of Maryland.
• Court: Maryland Court of Appeals

419 Md. 265

19 A.3d 369

Richard WHITE

v.STATE of Maryland.

No. 36

Sept. Term

2009.

Court of Appeals of Maryland.

April 27, 2011.

Henry L. Belsky (Schlachman, Belsky & Weiner, P.A., Baltimore, MD; Kimberly A. Alley of Kenney & Sams, P.C., Southborough, MA), on brief, for petitioner.Carl N. Zacarias, Asst. Atty. Gen. (Douglas F. Gansler, Atty. Gen. of Maryland, Baltimore, MD), on brief, for respondent.Argued before BELL, C.J., HARRELL, BATTAGLIA, GREENE, MURPHY, ADKINS and BARBERA, JJ.BARBERA, J.

Maryland's so-called “fireman's rule,” which we shall hereinafter refer to as the “firefighter's rule,” is a common law rule that generally precludes police officers and firefighters injured in the course of their duties from suing those whose negligence necessitated the public safety officers' presence at the location where the injury occurred. We hold that, under the facts of this case, the firefighter's rule bars Petitioner, Richard White, a police officer injured during a high-speed chase of a fleeing suspect, from suing Respondent, State of Maryland, the employer of a police dispatcher whose negligence caused Petitioner to engage in the high-speed chase.¹

I.

The following undisputed facts were adduced at trial. On the morning of October 24, 2002, Petitioner was on duty as a police officer for the town of Thurmont, in Frederick County, Maryland. That morning, Craig Main, an employee of the Ace Hardware store in Thurmont, placed a 911 call to report an incident that had just occurred at the store. The call was routed to the Maryland State Police Barrack in Frederick, where it was answered by the dispatcher, William Henrickson, an employee of the Maryland State Police. The call, set forth below, was recorded and later played at trial.

[Henrickson]: Maryland State Police in Frederick CPO Henrickson, how may I help you?

[Main]: Yeah I'm in Thurmont at the Ace Hardware. I just got shafted. A guy just robbed it.

[Henrickson]: At the Ace Hardware Store?

[Main]: Yeah.

Henrickson dispatched to the police Main's call for assistance. The audiotape of the dispatch reveals that Henrickson dispatched the call for help as: “Frederick, all cars, an armed robbery just occurred at the Ace Hardware in Thurmont.” (Emphasis added.) The dispatch also included a description of the getaway vehicle as “a red Nissan” last seen heading toward Route 15.

Petitioner received the call and soon located the suspects driving on a nearby roadway. Petitioner initiated pursuit. He activated the lights on his cruiser, which automatically activated the video camera mounted on the dashboard. The videotape of the pursuit was admitted into evidence at trial. It revealed the following events.

Petitioner and several other police officers, in their respective police cruisers, pursued the suspects over mostly rural, two-lane roads that do not have a shoulder. The suspects' vehicle is not seen in the video recording. Petitioner, though, communicated to Henrickson that he was in sight of the vehicle intermittently throughout the chase.

Approximately nine minutes into the chase, Petitioner approached a particularly sharp left turn on Yellow Springs Road, a two-lane roadway with a speed limit of 35 miles per hour. The camera recorded both a street sign that warned of the upcoming curve and three vehicles driving along the curve in the opposite direction of Petitioner's vehicle. The recording shows that Petitioner remained in his lane as he entered the curve but eventually lost control of the vehicle. It fish-tailed off the road, struck a culvert, became airborne, then collided with a tree. Petitioner suffered severe injuries that rendered him unable to recall the chase or any of the events preceding it.

The Trial and Appeal

Petitioner filed a complaint in the Circuit Court for Frederick County, Maryland, naming as defendants Henrickson and Respondent, State of Maryland, and alleging that Henrickson was negligent in issuing the dispatch. Petitioner alleged that Henrickson “owed [Petitioner] a duty to use reasonable care and/or the skill and care of a reasonably competent police dispatcher[,]” and Henrickson breached that duty of care when:

[He] requested emergency personnel response to an armed robbery at the Ace Hardware Store rather than a mere shoplifting, failed to inquire as to whether the suspects had shown or used any type of weapon during the incident prior to dispatching and/or requesting emergency personnel response, failed to make any substantive inquiry as to the threat posed by the suspects to the general public prior to dispatching and/or requesting emergency personnel response, and was in other ways careless, reckless and negligent.

Petitioner further alleged that he relied upon Henrickson to use reasonable care to provide accurate information and would not have commenced the high-speed chase had he not been given the false information that the suspects were armed. Petitioner sued Respondent under the theory of respondeat superior and alleged negligent hiring/supervision and negligence in supervising 911 dispatch protocols.

Before trial, the Circuit Court granted Henrickson's motion to dismiss the complaint on the basis of qualified immunity. The court, however, denied Respondent's motion to dismiss the suit, which asserted, inter alia, that the firefighter's rule barred Petitioner's claim. The court also denied Respondent's later motion for summary judgment raising the same argument.

At trial, Petitioner presented evidence of the undisputed facts we summarized above. Petitioner also presented the testimony of Henrickson, who acknowledged that one of the cardinal rules of dispatching is that a communications officer, when talking to a victim, must determine if the perpetrator is armed. Henrickson also conceded that the crime giving rise to the dispatch in question—shoplifting from a hardware store without any use of force—would qualify as a lower-priority call for a responding officer than a call for response to an armed robbery.

Charles Key, who was qualified as an expert in “police training, protocol and procedures[,] including high-speed pursuit and dispatch communications [,]” testified for Petitioner that his actions on the date in question were consistent with standard police training procedures and the actions of a reasonable police officer in the same or similar circumstances. Key opined that Petitioner would not have engaged in the high-speed pursuit if the dispatcher had described the crime as a simple theft.

At the conclusion of Petitioner's case-in-chief, Respondent moved for judgment, asserting, among other grounds, that Petitioner was barred from recovery by (1) operation of the firefighter's rule, and (2) his contributory negligence in conducting the pursuit. The court denied the motion. Respondent then presented in its case additional evidence of Petitioner's contributory negligence, which included expert testimony on the subject.

At the close of all the evidence, Respondent re-asserted both the firefighter's rule and contributory negligence as grounds for its renewed motion for judgment. The court granted the motion on both asserted grounds.

Petitioner argued on appeal to the Court of Special Appeals that neither the firefighter's rule nor the doctrine of contributory negligence entitled Respondent to judgment as a matter of law. The Court of Special Appeals affirmed the judgment, holding that the trial court correctly granted judgment in favor of Respondent, by application of the firefighter's rule. See White v. State, 183 Md.App. 658, 664, 963 A.2d 222, 226 (2008). The court did not address Petitioner's contributory negligence argument.

Tracing the development of the firefighter's rule in Maryland, the Court of Special Appeals noted that the rule is now based on public policy that recognizes the relationship between public safety officers, who have assumed certain occupational risks, and the public, whom those officers serve and protect. Id. at 669–72, 963 A.2d at 229–32. The court concluded that Petitioner was injured in the course of his duties as a police officer and no “exceptions” to the firefighter's rule applied; therefore, the lawsuit “fits squarely within the Fireman's Rule as it has evolved in this State.” Id. at 676–77, 963 A.2d at 233–34.

We granted Petitioner's petition for writ of certiorari to consider two questions, which we have re-phrased:

1. Whether the Court of Special Appeals erred in concluding that a police officer injured during a high-speed pursuit is barred by the firefighter's rule from recovering in a tort action alleging negligence by a police dispatcher in giving the police officer faulty information that led to the commencement of the high-speed pursuit?

2. Whether the Court of Special Appeals erred in declining to address whether a “special duty” exception to the firefighter's rule should be recognized in Maryland?

We agree with the Court of Special Appeals that Petitioner's suit is barred by application of the firefighter's rule and therefore affirm the judgment of that court. For reasons we shall explain, we decline to address the second question Petitioner presents.

II.

“[T]he doctrine known as the fireman's rule generally prevents fire fighters and police officers injured in the course of their duties from recovering tort damages from those whose negligence exposed them to the risk of injury.” Southland Corp. v. Griffith, 332 Md. 704, 713, 633 A.2d 84, 88 (1993).² In 1925, Maryland joined a number of other states in recognizing this common law rule, and, like our sister jurisdictions did at the time, we grounded the doctrine on a theory of premises liability.³ See Steinwedel v. Hilbert, 149 Md. 121, 123–24, 131 A. 44, 45–46 (1925) (applying the then-prevailing common law firefighter's rule, grounded on premises liability, to hold that the firefighter, who entered the premises leased by the defendant to fight a fire and was injured when he fell down an elevator shaft,...