The Maryland Court of Special Appeals turned back another injured victim under the archaic “Really, do we still have that in 2011?” doctrine of sovereign immunity.
The plaintiff alleged she suffered an ankle injury when she slipped and fell on a wet platform after exiting a train at the Cheverly Metro station in Prince George County. The defendant, the beloved Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, made all the usual – and appropriate – defenses. You knew the platform was wet, didn’t you? You even saw a yellow warning cone that the platform was wet, right? No one appeared to have mopped the floor to make it wet, did they?
The plaintiff’s lawyers got creative and did some research. They found out that WMATA used a cleaning agent “Super Shine-All” to clean its train platforms. The coefficient of friction on the floor, the plaintiff argued, was that it should have surprised no one that the woman would fall. In a trial before Judge Maureen M. Lamasney, a Prince George’s County jury agreed and awarded damages (I’m not sure how much).
The Maryland Court of Special Appeals reversed. Apparently, sovereign immunity bars the plaintiff’s claim because Maryland is a party to the WMATA Compact — along with Virginia, and the District of Columbia — that confers sovereign immunities upon WMATA. Really? Why? Who made that call and what did Maryland get for compromising the rights of our citizens to seek justice when someone negligent hurts them? (Maybe it was a condition of getting the deal done 45 years ago to get the WMATA into Maryland. I don’t know.)
The court goes into a lot of analysis of whether the discretionary function exception applies to this case. I would explain my understanding of it but it is painfully boring and you will probably never have to deal with it in your legal career (and I might screw up the explanation because I’ve never dealt with it before).
You can read the entire opinion here.
- The settlement value of slip and fall cases in Maryland