Opinion
Civil Case No. RWT-08-2308.
April 6, 2009
MEMORANDUM OPINION
On April 9, 2008, Sylvester Proctor was seriously injured when his motorcycle and a Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority ("WMATA") Metrobus collided at the intersection of Martin Luther King Highway and Parliament Place in Lanham, Maryland. Mr. Proctor and his wife Gloria ("Plaintiffs") filed their complaint for negligence and loss of consortium in the Circuit Court for Prince George's County, Maryland, on July 30, 2008. The complaint seeks $7 million in damages, in addition to costs. Defendant WMATA removed the complaint to this Court on September 4, 2008.
On February 19, 2009, WMATA made an offer of judgment of $400,000 to Plaintiffs, which they rejected. Based upon the decision of the Court of Special Appeals of Maryland in Wash. Metro. Area Transit Auth. v. Deschamps, 183 Md. App. 279, 297, 961 A.2d 591, 601 (2008), which applied a cap on damages in actions involving the State (of which WMATA was held to be a unit), WMATA moved for summary judgment on March 18, 2009. WMATA contended that, under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 68, it had made an offer of the maximum amount of recovery allowable under the damages cap, Md. Code Ann., State Gov't § 12-104 (West 2009), which Plaintiffs rejected, thereby divesting this Court of jurisdiction over the case. WMATA also moved to stay discovery and extend the deadlines in the Scheduling Order pending resolution of this issue.
The outcome of WMATA's motion for summary judgment turns on (1) whether it is a "unit" of the state when suit is brought against it in, or removed to, federal court such that the $200,000 cap on liability contained in the Maryland Tort Claims Act should apply; and (2) whether the Maryland cap on non-economic damages applies.
As to the first issue, state and federal courts in Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia have rendered inconsistent interpretations of this provision of Maryland's waiver of sovereign immunity. As it is axiomatic that the sovereign state may not be sued absent its express consent, this Court will accordingly defer to the Court of Appeals of Maryland for resolution of these important questions.
I.
WMATA was formed by an interstate compact among Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia, with the consent of the United States Congress. The compact waives WMATA's sovereign immunity under § 80, which provides that WMATA is "liable for its torts and those of its directors, officers, employees and agents committed in the conduct of any proprietary function, in accordance with the law of the applicable signatory." Md. Code Ann., Transp. § 10-204(80) (West 2009). The United States District Courts have original jurisdiction, concurrent with the courts of Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia, over any actions brought by or against WMATA. Id. § 10-204(81).
A. Applicability of the MTCA to WMATA
The Maryland Tort Claims Act ("MTCA") limits the liability of the State for tort claims as follows:
(1) Subject to the exclusions and limitations in this subtitle and notwithstanding any other provision of law, the immunity of the State and its units is waived as to a tort action, in a court of the State, to the extent provided under paragraph (2) of this subsection.
(2) The liability of the State and its units may not exceed $200,000 to a single claimant for injuries arising from a single incident or occurrence.
Md. Code Ann., State Gov't § 12-104(a) (emphasis added).
As a threshold matter, this Court must determine whether the MTCA applies to WMATA generally, and in particular, in a case in this Court. In order to do so, a Court must determine (1) whether WMATA is considered a "unit" of the state of Maryland; and (2) whether an action brought in a Maryland Circuit Court that is then removed to a United States District Court or that originates in a United States District Court sitting in Maryland is considered "a tort action, in a court of the State." Id.
It does not appear that the Court of Appeals of Maryland has ever addressed either question. However, the Court of Special Appeals has spoken on the issue in Wash. Metro. Area Transit Auth. v. Deschamps, 183 Md. App. 279, 297, 961 A.2d 591, 601 (2008). In Deschamps, the plaintiff was injured in an escalator accident at a Metrorail station in the District of Columbia, but filed suit in the Circuit Court for Prince George's County, Maryland. 183 Md. App. at 284, 961 A.2d at 594. The plaintiff's $351,781.95 jury verdict was reduced by the trial court's application of the MTCA, which was affirmed by the Court of Special Appeals. 183 Md. at 289, 961 A.2d at 597. The Court of Special Appeals noted that the term "unit" was undefined in the MTCA and it interpreted decisional law from the Court of Appeals to support its interpretation that WMATA was a state agency, which qualified as a "unit" such that the MTCA applied to cap the plaintiff's damage award at $200,000. 183 Md. at 299, 961 A.2d at 603. Deschamps, however, did not need to reach the issue of whether Maryland has waived its tort liability for a civil suit filed in a United States District Court or a civil suit removed from a Circuit Court, i.e., if those suits are considered to be "in a court of the State."
The United States District Court for the District of Columbia has addressed the issue and held that the MTCA liability cap could not be applied because "[i]t is clear from the plain language of the MTCA, however, that Maryland's limited waiver of sovereign immunity and the $200,000 limit on damages only extend to cases brought in Maryland state courts." Wilson v. Wash. Metro. Area Transit Auth., 436 F. Supp. 2d 1, 2-3 (D.D.C. 2006). The Wilson court relied upon the notion that "[a] state may waive immunity to different degrees in state courts as compared to federal courts, and a waiver in state court will not qualify as a waiver in federal court." Id. at 3 (citing Petty v. Tennessee-Missouri Bridge Comm'n, 359 U.S. 275, 276-77 (1959); Weller v. Dep't of Social Servs. for the City of Baltimore, 901 F.2d 387, 397-98 (4th Cir. 1990)).
On the issue of whether state liability caps apply to WMATA, a decision of the Supreme Court of Virginia and another decision of the United States District Court for the District of Maryland are instructive. The Supreme Court of Virginia held that the $75,000 liability cap contained in the Virginia Tort Claims Act ("VTCA"), Va. Code Ann. § 8.01-195.3 (2009), did not apply to WMATA because "[e]ven though WMATA is part of the State government, WMATA has expressly waived its right of sovereign immunity [under § 80 of the WMATA Compact,] . . . which does not contain any limitation on the amount of compensatory damages that a plaintiff may recover from WMATA, and § 80 does not mention or refer to the [VTCA]." Wash. Metro. Area Transit Auth. v. Briggs, 255 Va. 309, 312-13, 497 S.E.2d 139, 141 (1998). The Supreme Court of Virginia explained that the phrase "in accordance with the law of the applicable signatory," which is contained in § 80 of the WMATA Compact, did not incorporate the VTCA's $75,000 liability cap, and the Briggs court accordingly affirmed the trial court's denial of the motion to reduce the jury verdict. Id. (declining to apply VTCA damage cap to personal injury claim arising from a collision between plaintiff's motorcyle and a WMATA bus).
Similarly, a decision by the United States District Court for the District of Maryland found that "although WMATA shares in [Maryland]'s sovereign immunity as a general matter, . . . the Maryland Tort Claims Act is not incorporated into WMATA's blanket waiver of sovereign immunity for harm caused by its employees' negligence in their performance of non-governmental functions." Lyons v. Wash. Metro. Area Transit Auth., No. Civ. AMD 03-1066, 2003 WL 23305156, at *1 (D. Md. Dec. 26, 2003). In denying WMATA's motion for summary judgment and setting the case for a jury trial, the Lyons court, however, expressly declined to render an advisory opinion by "determining presently whether the [MTCA's $200,000 liability cap] applies" with the understanding that it would consider a post-verdict motion on the issue. Id. The issue was not resolved by the Lyons court because the parties reached a confidential settlement.
B. Applicability of the Cap on Noneconomic Damages to WMATA
It is also unclear whether another statutory damages cap may apply to the damages sought by Plaintiffs. Under Maryland law, there is a statutory cap on noneconomic damages which provides that "[i]n any action for damages for personal injury . . ., an award of noneconomic damages may not exceed [$695,000] for each direct victim of tortious conduct." Md. Ann. Code Cts. and Jud. Pro. § 11-108(b). "Noneconomic damages" are defined as "pain, suffering, inconvenience, physical impairment, disfigurement, loss of consortium, or other nonpecuniary injury." § 11-108(a). In Oak v. Connors, 339 Md. 24, 35 (1995), the Court of Appeals held that a single noneconomic damage award was appropriate to avoid duplicative recovery for the personal injury claim of the injured spouse and the derivative loss of consortium claim by the other spouse. It is unclear whether § 80 of the WMATA Compact effectively waives WMATA's sovereign immunity such that the limitation of noneconomic damages is inapplicable and whether the decisional law limiting the award to one spouse is similarly inapplicable. There does not appear to be any decisional law on this issue.
II.
Maryland has adopted the Uniform Certification of Questions of Law Act which is codified in Subtitle 6 of Title 12 of the Courts and Judicial Proceedings Article of the Annotated Code of Maryland. Under Section 12-603, the Court of Appeals is authorized to "answer a question of law certified to it by a court of the United States or by an appellate court of another state or of a tribe, if the answer may be determinative of an issue in pending litigation in the certifying court and there is no controlling appellate decision, constitutional provision or statute of this state."
There is considerable uncertainty as to the status of Maryland law as evidenced by the inability of the judges of the United States District Courts for the District of Maryland and the District of Columbia, the Supreme Court of Virginia, and the Maryland Court of Special Appeals to reach a single conclusion with respect to WMATA's waiver of sovereign immunity as it relates to state statutory liability caps. This Court has reservations concerning the approach taken by Maryland's intermediate appellate court in Deschamps, which appears to narrow the broad waiver of sovereign immunity contained in § 80 of the WMATA Compact, and the impact of this discordant interpretation as compared to the approaches taken by the Supreme Court of Virginia and two United States District Courts sitting in Maryland and the District of Columbia. Thus, it is a question that is most appropriately answered by Maryland's highest court, a court that has never addressed this issue, rather than an individual United States District Judge. Accordingly, the Court will, by separate Order, certify the questions raised by these appeals to the Court of Appeals of Maryland under the Maryland Uniform Certification of Questions of Law Act.