Baltimore not immune from suit by biker injured at Inner Harbor, MD high court rules

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The Maryland Supreme Court on Friday held that a state recreation law does not shield Baltimore City from a negligence lawsuit brought by a biker injured on the city’s Inner Harbor Promenade in 2018.

In a unanimous opinion July 17, the state’s top court held the Maryland Recreational Use Statute — which encourages property owners to open their property to the public by protecting them from tort liability — doesn’t apply if the property is also used for transportation.

“(W)e hold that the Recreational Use Statute does not protect local governments from common law liability when the government has made property available for transportation purposes as part of its public infrastructure, even when a permitted use within that transportation infrastructure — such as biking — also constitutes a recreational activity,” Justice Steven Gould wrote.

Baltimore City, which argued it owed no duty of care to the biker, Jamie Wallace, lost at each step of the litigation.

Wallace was biking home from work on the promenade, not far from Federal Hill, in June 2018 when a tire got stuck between the brick path and the granite bulkhead, launching her into the water and causing cuts and bruises.

She sued in Baltimore City Circuit Court in August 2019, and the jury awarded her $100,000. After the ruling, the city filed a motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict, and lost; a judge ruled that the city’s interpretation of the law would “yield an absurd result” because “the City would be absolutely immune from suit filed by anyone injured while bicycling or jogging on a city street.”

The Maryland Appellate Court upheld the lower court in February 2024, ruling that the promenade is a “connector” between different parts of the city, and wasn’t just a park solely used for recreation.

Gould wrote that the city’s argument “has in its favor some support in the text” of the statute.

“We cannot, however, overlook the ramifications of the City’s interpretation,” he wrote — namely, that all city streets could be covered by the statute.

“The City does not dispute that the consistent application of its logic would produce such results, nor does it contest that such a result would be contrary to the statute’s express purpose,” he wrote. “Instead, the City tries to assure us that such a result would never happen.”

Gould noted in his opinion that the promenade, an eight-mile path along the water, is included in Baltimore’s Bicycle Master Plan and, as such, is part of its transportation infrastructure.

“This is not to say that a formal incorporation of the property into the transportation infrastructure is the only way a local government could render the Recreational Use Statute inapplicable,” Gould wrote. “But because it did so here, the City established a right of access independent from any recreational invitation, and thus assumed the corresponding common law duties associated with that right.”

In a concurrence, Justice Jonathan Biran suggested a two-part test for determining when a defendant can use the Recreational Use Statute to shield itself from liability, in an attempt to account for the fact that some parks have both recreational and nonrecreational uses.

Wallace was represented by Curtis Cannon of Goldberg Finnegan in Silver Spring.