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Mastriano v. Blyer9/14/2001
s of fulfillment.
A common carrier owes its passengers a duty that requires "'the exercise of the highest degree of care compatible with the practical operation of the machine in which the conveyance was undertaken.'" Roberts v. Yellow Cab Co., 240 A.2d 733, 735 (Me. 1968) (quoting Chaput v. Lussier, 132 Me. 48, 52, 165 A. 573, 575 (1933)). This heightened standard of care continues until the carrier has given its passenger a reasonably safe discharge at a reasonably safe location. See Lipsky v. Padgett, 730 So.2d 818, 819 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 1999); Knoud v. Galante, 696 A.2d 854, 856 (Pa. Super. Ct. 1997).
Mastriano urges that we expand the common carrier's duty to provide a safe exit at a safe place to include an in loco parentis type of responsibility to intervene in an arguably intoxicated passenger's life, perhaps against the passenger's wishes, to ensure that the passenger does not harm himself or herself after the common carrier has given the safe exit that the law requires.
The existing rule establishes a bright line dividing the primary obligation of common carriers to provide a safe discharge, and the primary obligation of passengers to accept personal responsibility for their own safety. See Roberts, 240 A.2d at 735-36. We decline to expand the duty of common carriers by imposing in loco parentis oversight responsibilities for those passengers who are possibly inebriated or otherwise impaired.
Mastriano focuses on Dionne's .25 blood-alcohol content when Dionne died and Dionne's inferentially obvious drunken state to support her position. However, the new rule of law urged upon us makes no distinction between close cases and obvious ones. Instead, it would expose common carriers to potential liability anytime someone claims, with the clarity of hindsight and the emotion of subsequent tragedy, that the carrier should have noticed a passenger's possible impairment and, accordingly, taken steps, perhaps against the passenger's wishes, to protect the passenger from each and every potential harm of the passenger's own design. Our decisions do not support such an expansive view of duty.
When a plaintiff claims that a defendant had an affirmative duty to act to protect the plaintiff from himself or herself, we have generally held that "absent a special relationship, the law imposes no duty to act affirmatively to protect someone from danger unless the dangerous situation was created by the defendant." Jackson v. Tedd-Lait Post No. 75, Am. Legion, 1999 ME 26, 8, 723 A.2d 1220, 1221. See also Hughes v. Beta Upsilon Bldg. Ass'n, 619 A.2d 525, 526-27 (Me. 1993). As these cases suggest, we are cautious in assigning a duty which imposes an affirmative obligation to act, and we should be even more cautious when the duty urged upon us is a duty to intervene in a plaintiff's life to prevent the plaintiff from injuring himself or herself. In this analysis, Justice Cardozo, writing seven decades ago, suggested a useful point of distinction, asking "whether the putative wrongdoer has advanced to such a point as to have launched a force or instrument of harm, or has stopped where inaction is at most a refusal to become an instrument for good." H.R. Moch Co. v. Rensselaer Water Co., 159 N.E. 896, 898 (N.Y. 1928). Absent a special responsibility, no actionable duty is created by a refusal to become an instrument for good. In this case, any special responsibility ended with Dionne's safe exit at a safe place. The cab driver had no further duty to become an instrument for good, that is, to act affirmatively to protect the passenger from himself after his exit.
This is not a case where the forces that would harm the passenger were already unl
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