by special assignment, delivered the opinion of the Court.
On May 18, 1957, shortly after 7:15 P. M. (D. S. T.) an automobile driven by the appellee, Raymond Wempe, skidded momentarily off the wet surface of U. S. Route 219 in Garrett County, traveled some distance sidewise down the highway and eventually crossed to the opposite side and collided with two trees, killing the appellant’s decedent and injuring the infant appellant, both of whom had been riding in the front seat of the car. Four suits in one declaration alleging negligent operation of the motor vehicle were instituted in the Circuit Court for Allegany County and were subsequently removed to the Superior Court for Baltimore City. The trial resulted in a jury verdict exonerating Wempe. From the judgment on that verdict this appeal has been taken on several grounds. The appellants urge error in rulings by the trial court excluding certain testimony, in the court’s instructions to the jury, in certain rulings at the hearing on the motion for a new trial, and finally on the refusal of the trial court to grant either a directed verdict for the appellants or at least an instruction invoking the doctrine of res ipsa loquitur.
In the vicinity in which the accident occurred the highway is of macadam construction, twenty feet wide, with a berme or shoulder on each side and double solid white lines marking its center. For vehicles traveling in a southerly direction the road curves to the left (12 degrees), is banked on the west side and has a down grade of 8.4%. There is a marker a short distance north of the curve noting its existence. The speed limit is fifty miles per hour. The automobile involved in the accident was owned by appellant’s decedent, Mrs. Patricia Trenton, who was seated alongside the appellee, with her eleven year old daughter, Cynthia, (appellant) to her right. This group had left Cumberland, Maryland, stopped for dinner and were traveling in a southerly direction on Highway 219 en route to Deep Creek Bake when the accident occurred.
At the trial three witnesses testified to the facts surrounding the happening of the accident. Cynthia stated that prior *632 thereto the occupants were singing and the automobile was being operated “fine”, but she recalled nothing more until she awakened in the hospital.
Corporal Conrad, a member of the Maryland State Police, testified that he learned of the accident at 8:45 P. M. (D. S. T.), when there was still daylight, and arrived at the scene about 9:15 P. M. By then the occupants of the car had been taken to the hospital and the automobile, though still in the vicinity, had been towed from the place at which it had come to rest. He stated that he examined the highway, noted that a right wheel had “slid” to the right off the paved road with a very slight drop onto the berme, traveled down the berme eight feet and then returned to the paved surface. He further testified that “brush marks” on the highway indicated that the vehicle had then proceeded sidewise a distance of 208 feet diagonally down the highway to the left side, over the berme and grass shoulder and stopped upon colliding with two trees, a distance of 225 feet from the point where the wheel first left the hard surface on the right side. Corporal Conrad said the road was wet from rain earlier that afternoon and evening.
The appellee testified that he had driven over the highway on several previous occasions; that the road was wet from earlier rainfall; that he had been traveling at about 38-40 miles per hour, but let up on the gas pedal as he entered the curve; and that having glanced at the speedometer he noted his speed to have been 35 miles per hour at the beginning of the curve. There was no other traffic in sight at the time. As he rounded the curve while traveling in the center of the right lane, his right rear wheel slid to the right, dropping off the edge of the macadam portion of the highway onto the berme, which he estimated to have been about five inches below the road surface. He further stated that when the rear of the automobile had begun to slide, he did not apply his brakes but turned his wheel to the right and applied pressure to the accelerator. This alleged action on the part of the appellee was described by Officer Conrad as the proper procedure to follow when an automobile skids on a wet or slippery road.
All occupants of the car were seriously injured, and Mrs. *633 Trenton’s death resulted a few days later. Additional facts will be supplied from the testimony as may be necessary in dealing with the various contentions of the parties.
I
Appellants object to several rulings of the trial court prohibiting Corporal Conrad, the police investigating officer, from expressing his opinion that the maximum speed at which the appellee should have rounded the curve under then existing conditions was 25 miles an hour and that in his opinion 35 miles per hour (speed Wempe says he was traveling) was neither a safe nor proper speed. We will assume that because of Corporal Conrad’s experience and training as a member of the State Police, together with the social schooling he acquired at Northwestern University Traffic Institute, he qualifies as an expert and will further assume, without deciding, that he demonstrated sufficient knowledge of all the facts and circumstances surrounding the happening of the accident upon which to base an opinion. We, nevertheless, conclude the trial court did not abuse its discretion in refusing to admit this evidence.
Opinions of expert witnesses will not ordinarily be received “if the jury is able to decide or determine the question before it without special expert testimony. The witness must not usurp the province of the jury. (Citations omitted.) If a matter is within the knowledge and experience of persons of ordinary judgment and experience, opinion evidence, expert or otherwise, should not be admitted. If the facts can be intelligently understood by the jury and they can form a reasonable opinion from those facts for themselves, there is no reason to admit the opinion evidence of anyone. However, when the question involved is such that jurors of ordinary judgment and experience are incompetent to draw their own conclusion from the facts presented and intelligently decide the question before them without the aid of expert testimony, this opinion testimony is a notable exception to the well-known rules of evidence. This exception should be applied with the greatest caution and discrimination.”
Empire State Insurance Company v. Guerriero,
*635 II
The appellants urge that the trial court erred in failing upon proper motion to instruct the jury that the appellee was negligent as a matter of law, or at least in its refusal to explain to them, as requested, the effect in this case of the doctrine of res ipsa loquitur.
The majority of courts hold that the mere fact that a vehicle skids or slides on a slippery highway does not of itself constitute evidence of negligence and that in such cases the doctrine of
res ipsa loquitur
does not apply. 5 Am. Jur.,
Automobiles,
Sec. 273 ; 93 A. L. R. 1101, 1117; 58 A. L. R. 264, 269 ; 5 A. L. R. 1240, 1246; Harper and James,
The Law of Torts
(1956), Vol. 2, page 1092; Blashfield,
op. cit.,
Sec. 653. The decisions of this Court are fully in accord.
York Motor Express Co. v. State,
Given the elements of a wet road surface, a curve and a downhill grade, we cannot say that the sliding sidewise of the rear wheel of an automobile a few inches off of the hard surface of the road was such an occurrence that would not ordinarily have taken place in the absence of the driver’s negligence. Thus one of the essential prerequisites of the doctrine is missing. See Prosser,
Law of Torts
(1955), p. 199. It is in this respect that the present case is distinguishable from a situation in which “a vehicle leaves a highway and crashes into a building, or a pedestrian on a sidewalk.” See
Hickory Transfer Company v. Nesbed,
Nor is there any doubt but that the initial sidewise slipping of the car presented a “skidding” situation within the mean
*636
ing of the above-mentioned general rule. In
Clodfelter v.
Wells, (N. C.)
The situation in Hammond v. Hammond, 236 N. Y. S. 100; aff’d 237 N. Y. S. 557, was similar to the case at bar. The trial court, after a jury’s verdict for the plaintiff, granted the defendant driver a new trial on grounds which are not here pertinent. However, the Appellate Division, in affirming, thought it appropriate to state, in view of the possibility of a second trial, that the doctrine of res ipsa loquitur did not apply. It is noteworthy that the skidding there did not originate on a curve but developed for some unexplained reason while the defendant was proceeding down a slight grade on a wet highway. Furthermore, there was no mere sliding off of the surface of the highway in that case which might account for a subsequent loss of control on the part of the defendant; the car initially skidded and swerved to the driver’s left and thereupon collided with a guard rail on the left side of the road.
The reasoning in the
Hammond
case was later adopted by the New York Court of Appeals as the basis for the holding in
Lahr v. Tirrill,
(N.Y.)
The appellant relies heavily on
Lachman v. Pennsylvania Greyhound Lines,
The application of res ipsa loquitur to negligence cases growing out of the operation of motor vehicles depends upon the circumstances of each case (Shain, op. cit., p. 464) ; but since we conclude that the skid of an automobile under the circumstances described above is as consistent with ordinary care as it is with negligence on the part of the driver, the doctrine has no place in this case, and the trial court was correct in refusing to give an instruction on it. Furthermore, in view of the condition of the road, the testimony of the infant appellant that the appellee was driving “fine” before the accident, the testimony of Wempe that he was operating well within the posted speed limits, and the uncontradicted testimony of the police officer, admitted without objection, that Wempe acted wisely if, as he testified, he turned his wheels in the direction of the initial skid, refrained from using the brake, and maintained pressure on the accelerator—we certainly cannot say, as a matter of law, that the only reasonable inference which could be drawn from all the evidence was that the appellee was guilty of negligence proximately causing injury and death to the respective appellant and appellant’s decedent. We therefore hold that the trial court was correct in denying the appellant’s motion for a directed verdict.
Ill
The appellants urge that the trial court erred when it instructed the jury, at one point in its charge, that it was necessary in order to find the defendant liable that they find he was negligent and “that his negligence was the direct and proximate cause of the injuries and damages that resulted” (Emphasis supplied.) and again when the jury was told that, upon finding that the defendant violated any of the traffic laws read to them or summarized Art. 66)4, Sec. 209 (a), pro *638 hibiting reckless driving and improper speed; Sec. 211 (a), prohibiting speed greater than reasonable and prudent; Sec. 211 (e), duty to decrease speed rounding curves, on narrow roads, and because of weather conditions “you have to determine whether such violation was the direct and proximate cause of the accident.” (Emphasis supplied.) Appellants contend “a” or “a contributing” should have been substituted for the word “the” because the appellee’s negligence need not have been the sole cause in order to create his responsibility for the accident.
Because it is clear that “where several causes [none of which are attributable to the plaintiff] combine to produce injuries, a person is not relieved from liability because he is responsible for only one of them”
(Armiger v. Baltimore Transit Company,
The case was submitted on issues, and the jury was told that the first question for their decision was: “Was the defendant guilty of negligence which directly caused or contributed to the happening of the accident?” (Emphasis supplied.) Negligence was defined as failure to exercise ordinary care, that is “such care as an ordinary prudent person would have exercised under the same or similar circumstances.” There was an explanation that ordinary care was a relative term and depended on existing circumstances; that the existing circumstances in this case should be determined, by the *639 jury, from the evidence and proper inferences to be drawn therefrom, so that they “ultimately determine whether or not the defendant did exercise ordinary care.” Some of these circumstances relative to the type of road construction, weather, speed limit and the operation of the automobile were reviewed. The jury was told they should determine “whether the right rear wheel of the car in leaving the road, and what followed after that, was due to any failure on the part of the defendant to exercise ordinary care, that is to say, such care as an ordinarily prudent person would have exercised under the same circumstances.” In concluding its discussion of the first issue the court said, “If you find that the defendant did not exercise ordinary care, as I have explained it to you, under all the circumstances, then your answer to the first question would be ‘yes’.”
The case of
Wastl v. Montana Union Ry. Co.,
(Mont.)
We need not decide which of these positions has the greater merit, for the case at bar fits within the exception noted by the majority. We think the instructions below, taken as a whole, properly informed the jury as to the legal principles which they should apply to the facts determined by them.
IV
The lower court declined to instruct the jury that the exist *640 ing road and weather conditions required of the appellee unusual or a greater amount of care, and we agree.
The degree of care required of all operators of motor vehicles, other than public carriers, is that of ordinary care. What action or precaution is required to meet the standard of ordinary care may and does vary, depending on the then existing circumstances; but the standard itself remains constant.
People’s Drug Stores v.
Windham,
From the portions of the instructions quoted and referred to under III above, it is obvious that Judge Warnken correctly and fully informed the jury as to the proper standard of care required of the appellee in his operation of the automobile.
V
The last complaint of the appellants requiring our consideration relates to rulings of the trial court at the hearing on the motion for a new trial. Two of the grounds assigned for requesting a new trial allege misconduct on the part of a juror or jurors in verbally communicating with the court clerk, relative to matters upon which the jury was then deliberating, out of the presence of the entire jury panel and out of the presence of the court and counsel. Attached to the motion is an affidavit of the court clerk reading as follows: “The Forewoman came down from the jury room and asked the following question, if we answer the Issue A [first issue] No, do we have to answer the rest of the issues, to which I replied No, and she went back upstairs to the jury room.”
The record discloses the case was submitted to the jury on six issues. Judge Warnken originally instructed them to answer each issue. Upon reflection, he gave a supplemental instruction, whereby he informed the jury that if they answered the first issue “yes”, there would be “a verdict in favor of some or all of the plaintiffs”, and they should also answer the other issues. The jury was further told that if they answered the first issue “no”, they will have decided “the defendant was not guilty of negligence”, with the result that a verdict would be entered for the defendant and there *641 would exist no necessity to answer any of the other issues.
At the hearing on the motion for a new trial, appellants’ counsel sought to interrogate each member of the jury panel as to “what the Forelady was instructed to ask the court and what her reply was when she came back to the jury room.” When such interrogation was not permitted, counsel proffered to show through members of the jury “that the Forelady was told to ask the court whether if they answered the first issue —No, would that affect the claim of the child or affect the child’s right to obtain some money for her injuries?”
The extent to which the court may consider discussions and events taking place in the jury room, based on affidavits or testimony of members of the jury, has been the subject of considerable litigation in this country. No useful purpose will be served by reviewing the authorities in this state and other jurisdictions, since this was so recently done in
Williams v.
State,
*642
If the privacy of the jury room is to be invaded, there is more reason to do so in a situation as is alleged to have occurred in
Kelly v. Huber Baking Co.,
The information contained in the affidavit of the court clerk presents a different situation because it emanates from one not a member of the jury panel and is based on his own knowledge. Such evidence should be received and considered by the court in ruling on a motion for a new trial.
Wash., B. & A. Railroad Co., v. Kimmey,
The remaining objections urged by the plaintiffs relate to instructions of the lower court concerning contributory negligence of Mrs. Trenton and damages, but with a finding that there was no error in the rulings heretofore discussed, it becomes unnecessary to pass upon these additional questions presented.
Judgment affirmed, with costs.