## Facts

- In a restaurant parking lot, Jeffrey Mintiens backed his truck out of a parking space and struck a car in which Victoria Seaborne-Worsley was seated.
- Seaborne-Worsley was the sole owner of the car but was not driving at the time of the collision.
- Seaborne-Worsley’s husband had driven to the restaurant, stopped the car in a travel lane perpendicular to Mintiens’ parking space, and went inside to pick up takeout.
- Seaborne-Worsley sued Mintiens for negligence and sought damages for injuries from the collision.
- Mintiens asserted contributory negligence, arguing the husband’s negligent positioning of the car in the travel lane should be imputed to Seaborne-Worsley because she was the owner-passenger.

## Issues

1. Whether a third-party defendant may defeat an owner-passenger’s negligence claim by imputing the permissive driver’s negligence to the owner-passenger as contributory negligence when the owner-passenger is personally without fault.

## Decision

- The Court of Appeals of Maryland vacated the circuit court’s affirmance of the defense judgment and remanded.
- The court held that the doctrine of imputed negligence does not apply to bar a faultless owner-passenger’s recovery through a contributory negligence defense.
- The lower courts erred by imputing the husband-driver’s negligence to Seaborne-Worsley solely because she owned the vehicle.

## Legal Principles

- Imputed negligence historically allowed a vehicle owner to be held liable to third parties for the negligence of a permissive driver while the owner was a passenger, based on a presumed “control” rationale.
- That doctrine does not support imputing a permissive driver’s negligence to an owner-passenger to establish contributory negligence against an owner-passenger who is personally without fault.
- Modern automobile financial responsibility laws and insurance practices have undercut the policy justification for using imputed negligence to deny recovery to an innocent owner-passenger injured by a negligent third party.

## Conclusion

Maryland’s high court rejected using imputed negligence as a contributory negligence bar against a faultless owner-passenger and sent the case back for further proceedings without imputing the permissive driver’s alleged negligence to the owner-passenger.


Seaborne-Worsley v. Mintiens, 458 Md. 555, 183 A.3d 141 (Md. 2018)