Maryland injury law differs from most states in ways that change outcomes, not just paperwork. The fault rule is stricter than almost anywhere else in the country, the deadlines vary by who you are suing, and the insurance that pays first is not always the insurance of the person who caused the harm.
What follows is a plain statement of those rules. It is general information, not legal advice, and how any of it applies depends on facts we would need to see.
Contributory negligence: the rule that ends claims
Maryland is one of a small handful of jurisdictions that still applies contributory negligence. If an injured person is found to share even slight responsibility for what happened, they can be barred from recovering anything at all.
Most states abandoned this long ago in favor of comparative fault, where compensation is reduced by the injured person's share of blame rather than eliminated. Maryland did not. Alabama, North Carolina, Virginia and the District of Columbia are the other jurisdictions that kept it.
The consequence is practical: insurers investigate your conduct as hard as their insured's, because a finding of slight fault against you ends the claim rather than reducing it. There are narrow exceptions, including the last clear chance doctrine, and they turn on the facts. The full contributory negligence explanation is here.
How long you have to file
Maryland generally allows three years from the date of injury to file a personal injury lawsuit. Several situations depart from that:
- Medical malpractice generally runs five years from the injury or three years from when it was discovered, whichever comes first. See medical malpractice.
- Claims against a government body can require written notice far sooner than the lawsuit deadline, sometimes within months. A county school board, a municipal ambulance service or a state agency each bring their own notice rules.
- Claims for children follow their own timing, which can extend the deadline for an injury suffered in childhood.
- Child sexual abuse claims follow rules Maryland has changed in recent years. See sexual abuse claims.
- Wrongful death runs on its own clock, generally from the date of death rather than the date of injury.
Evidence has a shorter life than any of these deadlines. Video is overwritten in days, vehicles are repaired, and witnesses move.
The insurance rules that decide who pays
- Personal injury protection (PIP). Maryland insurers must offer PIP, which pays toward medical bills and lost wages regardless of who caused the crash, unless the policyholder waived it in writing. It pays early, which matters when treatment starts before any claim resolves.
- Minimum liability limits. Maryland requires minimum bodily injury liability coverage, and those minimums are far below the cost of a serious injury.
- Uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage. Where the at-fault driver has no insurance, too little, or leaves the scene, your own policy may be the source of recovery. See uninsured motorist claims.
- Health insurance and liens. A health insurer, Medicare or Medicaid that paid your bills may have a right to be repaid from a recovery. This is often the difference between a headline settlement figure and what a client actually receives.
What Maryland law lets you recover
Maryland claims separate economic losses, which are proven with records, from non-economic losses, which are not:
- Economic: medical bills already incurred and care still to come, lost wages, reduced earning capacity, and property damage.
- Non-economic: pain, suffering, disfigurement and the ways an injury changes daily life.
Maryland caps non-economic damages, and the cap is adjusted over time. Medical malpractice claims are subject to their own separate cap. Economic losses are not capped, which is why documenting future care properly matters so much in a serious case. Past results in other cases do not predict any particular outcome.
Claims against a government body
If the defendant is a county, a municipality, a state agency or a transit authority, the claim runs through a statutory notice scheme before any lawsuit. The notice periods are short, the requirements are formal, and missing one can end an otherwise strong case.
This applies more often than people expect: a school bus, a police vehicle, an ambulance, a pothole, a transit bus or a Metro platform all put a government body on the other side. If a government vehicle or property was involved, treat the clock as running immediately.
