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Hartford Insurance Co. v. Manor Inn of Bethesda Inc.6/9/1994
at 1083; Henley, 305 Md. at 333-34, 503 A.2d at 1340. That "involves a prospective consideration of the facts existing at the time of the negligent conduct." Henley, 305 Md. at 336, 503 A.2d at 1341. In Henley, we noted that "at least since 1928 when [Chief] Judge Cardoza wrote Palsgraf v. Long Island R. Co., 248 N.Y. 339, 162 N.E. 99 (1928), courts have given further effect to the social policy of limitation of liability for remote consequences by narrowing the concept of duty to embrace only those persons or classes of persons to whom harm of some type might reasonably have been foreseen as a result of the particular tortious conduct." Id. at 333-34, 503 A.2d at 1340. On the other hand, "'foreseeability' must not be confused with 'duty'. The fact that a result may be foreseeable does not itself impose a duty in negligence terms." Asburn, 306 Md. at 628, 510 A.2d at 1083.
In Palsgraff a passenger who was rushing to catch the defendant's train, jumped aboard the moving train and, when he appeared to lose his balance, was assisted by the defendant's employees. Their assistance caused the small package he was carrying to drop onto the tracks. Because it contained fireworks, the package exploded, causing some scales on the platform, many feet away, to fall upon and injure the plaintiff. 162 N.E. at 99. Noting that the appearance of the package gave no clue as to its contents, the court held that the consequences to the plaintiff of the defendant railroad's conduct even if it were tortious as to the boarding passenger, were unreasonably remote; hence, she could not recover. The Court reasoned that it was unforeseeable that the act of assisting a boarding passenger who was carrying a package would result in injury to another passenger many feet away when the boarding passenger inadvertently dropped the package. Id. at 343-344. "The risk reasonably to be perceived defines the duty to be obeyed, and risk imports relation; it is risk to another or to others within the range of apprehension," it opined. Id. at 100. The duty that the State is alleged to have breached is not one that flows directly from the State to the petitioner;
rather, it involves the State's obligation with respect to the conduct of a third person. The general rule is "that there is no duty to control a third person's conduct so as to prevent personal harm to another, unless a 'special relationship' exists either between the actor and the third person or between the actor and the person injured," Ashburn, 306 Md. at 628, 510 A.2d at 1083. See Lamb v. Hopkins, 303 Md. at 242-44, 492 A.2d at 1300-01; Scott v. Watson, 278 Md. at 166, 359 A.2d at 552 (1976); Restatement (Second) of Torts ยง 315 (1965). Although section 315 of the Restatement states the general rule, section 319 addresses a particular exception to that general rule. Entitled "Duty Of Those In Charge Of Persons Having Dangerous Propensities," it provides:
One who takes charge of a third person whom he knows or should know to be likely to cause bodily harm to others if not controlled is under a duty to exercise reasonable care to control the third person to prevent him from doing such harm.
We expressly adopted this section of the Restatement as the law of Maryland in Lamb, 303 Md. at 245, 492 A.2d at 1301. In so doing, we commented that it applied to two situations: when the actor has charge of one or more of a class of persons
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