ADM Partnership v. Martin11/19/1997
Opinion by Bell, C.J.
FILED: November 19, 1997
The issue this case presents is whether the "voluntariness" element of the assumption of risk defense is met when an employee encounters a known risk while performing a responsibility of her employment, but, nevertheless, based solely on her subjective belief that the failure to fulfill that responsibility may result in adverse economic consequences to her employer and ultimately to herself, proceeds to confront the risk, sustaining, in the process, serious bodily injury . We shall answer in the affirmative.
In the case sub judice, Keen Tykenko Martin (Martin) and American Motorist Insurance Company, (collectively, the respondents) filed, in the Circuit Court for Montgomery County, an action sounding in negligence against ADM Partnership, Inc. and its three general partners, Scott L. MacDonald, Joe C. Adams, and Franklin J. Duane, (collectively, the petitioners), for injuries Martin sustained when she slipped and fell on an ice and snow covered walkway as she made a delivery at a building the petitioners owned. At the conclusion of the respondents' case, the circuit court granted the petitioners' motion for judgment and entered judgment accordingly. Viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the respondents, the court found that the evidence conclusively established that Martin knowingly and voluntarily assumed the risk of falling on a walkway covered with ice and snow. The respondents appealed that judgment to the Court of Special Appeals, which, in a reported opinion, Martin v. ADM Partnership, Inc., 106 Md. App. 652, 666 A.2d 876 (1995), reversed. This Court granted the petitioners' petition for the writ of certiorari, 341 Md. 719, 672 A.2d 659 (1996). For the reasons set forth herein, we shall reverse the judgment of the Court of Special Appeals and affirm the judgment of the circuit court.
I.
The pertinent facts are not in dispute. On the morning of March 8, 1989, Martin, employed as a delivery person for Ideal Reprographics, Inc., a blueprint reproduction company, was assigned to deliver blueprints to a business located in Rockville, Maryland, at 98 Church Street, a property owned by the petitioners. Although it had snowed some nineteen hours earlier and the precipitation had ceased, ice and snow surrounded the building, particularly the parking lot directly in front of the building and the entrance walkway. Martin testified at trial that she observed that there was ice and unplowed snow surrounding the building when she arrived at the building, and that she wondered why the walkways had not been cleared. Despite the condition of the parking lot and the entrance walkway, Martin testified that, because she observed that there were other vehicles in the parking lot, that people were working inside the building, and that there were footprints in the snow and ice, suggesting that there was a safe means of ingress and egress to and from the building, she felt that she could safely enter the building. Martin also testified that, although her employer never told her that she could lose her job if she did not make the subject delivery, or any other deliveries she was assigned to make, she believed that she had no choice but to deliver the blueprints. As she saw it, if the delivery was not made, Ideal Reprographics could have lost that delivery contract, with the consequence that her employment could then have been terminated.
To retrieve the blueprints for delivery, Martin exited her vehicle and started around to the passenger side. As she proceeded, Martin slipped on the ice in the parking lot, but avoided falling to the ground by grabbing hold of her vehicle. Having recovered without
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