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Coates v. Southern Maryland Electric Cooperative Inc.6/16/1999
. Scott v. Watson, supra (citing § 315), we find it necessary to do so now.
A.
Section 315 is a special application of the general rule set forth in § 314. Section 314 states that " he fact that the actor realizes or should realize that action on his part is necessary for another's aid or protection does not of itself impose upon him a duty to take such action." Id. at 241-42, 492 A.2d at 1300 (emphasis added) (alterations in original).
Lamb clearly involves another area of negligence law. Nonetheless, I fail to see any duty owed by a property owner to people who crash onto and into his or her property, nor do I see any special relationship between property owners and crashing motorists. Merely because a property owner may realize that he or she has the power to make the property safer for people who crash into or onto it, "does not of itself impose upon him a duty to take such action." Lamb, 303 Md. at 242, 492 A.2d at 1300; Restatement, supra § 314.
In my view, without duty there is no liability, regardless of whether a result is foreseeable or a party has the power to influence that result. I respectfully suggest that the majority's emphasis in this case on foreseeability principles is unnecessary and, perhaps, with all due respect, misleading, in that such emphasis may suggest, even in similar circumstances, that property owners have a duty to utilize their property in such a manner that uninvited, crashing motorists are protected from injuring themselves. Property owners are not insurers of the safety of motorists who crash upon their property. So long as a property owner does not permit his activities to encroach onto the traveled portions of highways, i.e., the area designed for lawful use of motorists, the Court should hold that owners have no duty to do anything on their property to lessen the damage to passengers injured by the actions and/or negligence of themselves or others.
Judge Eldridge has authorized me to state that he joins in this concurrence.
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