Cameron Cunningham v. State of Maryland, et al.
No. 0216, Sept. Term, 2025
Appellate Court of Maryland
July 2, 2026
Wells, C.J.
MARYLAND TORT CLAIMS ACT – FILING REQUIREMENT – APPLICABILITY OF MINORITY TOLLING
Generally, a tort claim against the State must be filed under the Maryland Tort Claims Act (“MTCA”) within three years after the cause of action arises.
Based on our appellate case law, the legislative histories of the statutes, basic tenets of statutory interpretation, and public policy concerns, the MTCA’s three-year filing requirement must be tolled during a plaintiff’s minority. Minors are legally disabled from filing suit until they turn 18. After turning 18, the three-year filing requirement will begin running. If suit is not subsequently filed at the end of that time period, the plaintiff will no longer have a cause of action because the State’s waiver of its immunity will have “vanished.”
In this case, because Cunningham filed suit within three years of turning 18, his suit was timely. We reverse the lower court’s dismissal of Cunningham’s suit.
CAMERON CUNNINGHAM v. STATE OF MARYLAND, ET AL.
No. 0216, September Term, 2025
IN THE APPELLATE COURT OF MARYLAND
Filed: July 2, 2026
Wells, C.J., Friedman, Hotten, Michele D. (Senior Judge, Specially Assigned), JJ.
Circuit Court for Baltimore City Case No. C-24-CV-24-003881. REPORTED. Opinion by Wells, C.J.
- Whether the MTCA’s three-year filing requirement under
SG § 12-106(b)(3) is subject to the tolling for minors outlined inMaryland Code, Courts & Judicial Proceedings Article (“CJ”) § 5-201 .1
For the reasons that follow, we hold the tolling for minors under
FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND
On October 11, 2019, Baltimore County Police officers arrested Cunningham at his high school when he was sixteen years old. Cunningham, as he asserted in his complaint, suffered a severe injury to his left knee during the arrest. He was transported to a hospital for treatment immediately following the arrest, after which he was released into DJS custody with specific instructions for follow-up care from his medical providers. While in
Cunningham turned eighteen on November 15, 2021. On November 11, 2024, five years after he was injured in police custody, but less than three years after he turned eighteen, he sued the State, DJS, and DPSCS alleging negligence and gross negligence. The State moved to dismiss the complaint based on sovereign immunity,2 which Cunningham opposed. After a hearing, the circuit court granted the State’s motion to dismiss. In its oral ruling, the court stated the following:
. . . [T]he Court finds that this matter is statutorily barred. Even if I was to view 12-106(b)(3) as both a condition precedent and a limitations period, and even if Plaintiff’s status as a minor tolled the limitations component of the statute, it does not [toll] the condition precedent to this action.3 So as an untolled condition precedent, the Court finds that it is barred. Therefore the Court will grant the Motion to Dismiss.
Cunningham now appeals.
“When reviewing the grant of a motion to dismiss, the appropriate standard of review ‘is whether the trial court was legally correct.’” D.L. v. Sheppard Pratt Health Sys., Inc., 465 Md. 339, 350 (2019) (quoting Blackstone v. Sharma, 461 Md. 87, 110 (2018)). We review a circuit court’s ruling on a legal question de novo, meaning “without deference” to the lower court’s decision. Rodriguez v. Cooper, 458 Md. 425, 437 (2018).
DISCUSSION
I. The MTCA’s Three-Year Filing Requirement is Subject to the Tolling for Minors Imposed by CJ § 5-201.
A. Parties’ Contentions
Cunningham argues the tolling provision in
The State contends
B. Analysis
Based on the development of appellate case law in this area, as well as the relevant legislative histories, we conclude the tolling provision for minors found in
“It is the long-established view that a sovereign, such as a state, is ‘infallible,’ and, thus, immune from suit ‘absent the State’s consent.’” Williams v. Morgan State Univ., 484 Md. 534, 538 (2023). The State of Maryland has consented to suit in limited circumstances under the MTCA:
The MTCA is codified under the State Government Article as Subtitle 1 of Title 12. “The MTCA was enacted in 1981 as a waiver of the State’s sovereign immunity for tortious acts or omissions committed within the scope of the public duties of ‘state personnel’ and committed without malice or gross negligence.” Barbre v. Pope, 402 Md. 157, 173 (2007). Under the MTCA, a party injured by the negligent act or omission of a state officer or
employee within the scope of the officer’s or employee’s public duties may obtain compensation for that injury from the State.
Id. at 542–43.
The pertinent part of the MTCA at issue here,
(b) . . . [A] claimant may not institute an action under this subtitle unless:
(1) the claimant submits a written claim to the Treasurer or a designee of the Treasurer within 1 year after the injury to person or property that is the basis of the claim;
(2) the Treasurer or designee denies the claim finally; and
(3) the action is filed within 3 years after the cause of action arises.
(emphasis supplied). The first two requirements, (b)(1) and (b)(2), are not disputed in this case. Cunningham argues the three-year filing requirement under (b)(3) is subject to
(a) When a cause of action subject to a limitation under Subtitle 1 of this title or Title 3, Subtitle 9 of this article accrues in favor of a minor or mental incompetent, that person shall file his action within the lesser of three years or the applicable period of limitations after the date the disability is removed.
If the tolling provision applies to the MTCA, then Cunningham’s suit was timely because he filed it within three years after his legal “disability,” i.e., his minority, was removed upon turning eighteen. On the other hand, if the tolling provision does not apply, then the suit was untimely and properly dismissed since he did not file it within three years after the cause of action arose.
i. Relevant Appellate Decisions
We begin our analysis with a discussion of the relevant case law.
The Court in Sharafeldin engaged in statutory interpretation to distinguish statutes of limitations from statutory waivers of sovereign immunity. Our Supreme Court has “held, consistently, that immunity from suit is ‘one of the highest attributes of sovereignty,’ and that any waiver of that immunity must come from the Legislature.” Id. at 140 (citations omitted). In contrast to statutes of limitations, “State agencies may not, on their own, waive sovereign immunity ‘either affirmatively or by failure to plead it.’” Id. (quoting Dep’t of Nat. Res. v. Welsh, 308 Md. 54, 60 (1986)). Further, while statutes of limitations “normally state only that an action ‘shall be filed within’ the allowable period,” those waiving sovereign immunity establish that an untimely action shall be barred completely. Sharafeldin, 382 Md. at 140–41. In other words, “limitations is an affirmative defense that
Those same principles, as the Sharafeldin Court recounted, are reflected in federal and state law regarding the distinction between a condition precedent to the waiver of sovereign immunity and a traditional statute of limitations. See id. at 147:
[W]here a statute creates a new cause of action and fixes a time within which a suit under the statute must be filed, “[t]he time within which the suit must be brought operates as a limitation of the liability itself as created, and not of the remedy alone.”
“Time has been made of the essence of the right and the right is lost if the time is disregarded. The liability and the remedy are created by the same statutes, and the limitations of the remedy are therefore to be treated as limitations of the right.”
(quoting The Harrisburg, 119 U.S. 199, 214 (1886)). See also id. at 148:
“There is a substantial body of law to the effect that where a limitation period is stipulated in a statute creating a cause of action it is not to be considered as an ordinary statute of limitations, but is to be considered as a limitation upon the right as well as the remedy[.]”
(quoting Blocher v. Harlow, 268 Md. 571, 581 (1973)). See also Rios v. Montgomery Cnty., 386 Md. 104, 127 (2005) (“We have previously defined a ‘condition precedent’ as ‘a condition attached to the right to sue at all.’ . . . A condition precedent cannot be waived
Applying those standards to
Turning to Higginbotham, we first recount the key portions of the Court’s statutory interpretation of
The Court provided a comprehensive background on the principles of statutory interpretation, which is partially reproduced here:
“Where the statutory language is plain and free from ambiguity, . . . courts do not normally look beyond the words of the statute itself to determine legislative intent.” Nor may a court under those circumstances add or delete language so as to “reflect an intent not evidenced in that language,” or
construe a statute with “‘forced or subtle interpretations’ that limit or extend its application.” We have acknowledged that in determining a statute’s meaning, courts may consider the context in which a statute appears, including related statutes and, even when a statute is clear, its legislative history. We have cautioned, however, that this inquiry is “in the interest of completeness,” “to look at the purpose of the statute and compare the result obtained by use of its plain language with that which results when the purpose of the statute is taken into account.” That inquiry, in other words, . . . “is a confirmatory process; it is not undertaken to contradict the plain meaning of the statute.”
Id. at 118 (quoting W. Corr. Inst. v. Geiger, 371 Md. 125, 141–42 (2002)) (internal citations omitted) (cleaned up).
Although the statute is unambiguous on its face, the Court looked to
After discussing relevant decisions and the confusion caused by the statute’s filing requirement, the Court explained that “SG § 12-106 was amended again in 1994,” which added the language we see today under subsection (b)(3)—that the action must be filed within three years after the cause of action arises. Id. at 125. In recounting this amendment, the Court cited the “Department of Legislative Reference’s 1994 SESSION REVIEW,” which stated under a subheading titled “Limitations Period”:
. . . The bill is intended to eliminate confusion regarding the current law and to make the MTCA limitations consistent with the general statute of limitations under § 5-101 of the Courts Article, which requires that a civil action be filed within 3 years from the date the cause of action arises.
Id. at 126 (emphasis omitted).9
The Court then applied Sherafeldin to conclude
Both the location of SG § 12-106 in Subtitle 1 of Title 12 of the State Government Article, and a review of the MTCA’s legislative history, reinforce the presumption that the General Assembly “meant what it said and said what it meant” when it repealed the “applicable period of limitations” restriction and enacted the requirement that an action under the MTCA be “filed within 3 years after the cause of action arises.”
Id. at 126. Accordingly, the one-year statute of limitations otherwise applicable to defamation actions under
Most recently, in a case relied upon by the State in its brief, this Court reaffirmed the aforementioned distinctions between statutes of limitations and conditions precedent to the waiver of sovereign immunity in Peacock v. Debley, 261 Md. App. 540 (2024). There, we held the filing requirement under
Finally, outside the foregoing line of cases, our Supreme Court held that under Article 19 of the Maryland Declaration of Rights, the statute of limitations for medical malpractice cases under
Piselli explained that “the principle that statutory time limits for a minor to bring an action do not begin running until the age of majority has been firmly established in our law
The restrictions upon a minor’s remedy and access to the courts, contained in subsections (b), (c) and (e) of [CJ] § 5-109, represent a drastic departure from a principle which has governed minors’ causes of action for more than 500 years. Until the recent enactment of these subsections, periods of limitations did not begin running against a child’s claim until the child reached the age of majority. In our view, mandating that the three and five-year limitations periods run against a minor’s tort claim from the time the minor is 11 years old, or under a few circumstances 16 years old, is an unreasonable restriction upon a child’s remedy and the child’s access to the courts.
Id. at 215. Because “a child is disabled from bringing a tort action until he or she is 18 years old,” the Court held that “barring an injured child’s medical malpractice claim before the child is able to bring an action is an unreasonable restriction upon the child’s right to a remedy and access to the courts guaranteed by Article 19 of the Maryland Declaration of Rights.” Id. at 215–16.
ii. Application
Based on the foregoing appellate decisions, we conclude the MTCA’s three-year filing requirement for tort actions against the State is subject to the tolling for minors otherwise imposed by
A key feature of statutes of limitations, historically, is tolling for minor plaintiffs. Piselli, 371 Md. at 214; Anderson v. United States, 427 Md. 112, 118 (2012). See also Buxton v. Buxton, 363 Md. 634, 646 (2001) (“It has long been the case, as part of the statute of limitations itself, that the statute is tolled during the period that the plaintiff was an infant or mentally incompetent.”). The justification is simple: legally, “a child is disabled from bringing a tort action until he or she is 18 years old.” Piselli, 371 Md. at 215. Because a child himself cannot bring his own tort claim, he relies on his parents to do so if they desire the action to be brought before the child turns 18. Tort actions’ statutes of limitations, therefore, are tolled for minors until they turn 18 because
if the parents’ failure to bring a claim before the expiration of limitations had the effect of barring the minor child’s claim, “the child would be twice victimized—once at the hands of the tortfeasor, and once by parents who, for whatever reason, failed to timely prosecute [the] claims[.]”
Id. at 216 (quoting Johns Hopkins Hosp. v. Pepper, 346 Md. 679, 695 (1997)) (first alteration in Piselli). Since “[w]e cannot countenance a result that would leave the only
We recognize as well the sanctity of a state’s sovereign immunity and the importance of conditions precedent to safeguarding that immunity. Yes, the General Assembly “meant what it said and said what it meant” when it enacted the requirement that an action under the MTCA be “filed within 3 years after the cause of action arises.” Higginbotham, 412 Md. at 126. But it also meant what it said when it stated its purpose in enacting that requirement was “to make the MTCA limitations consistent with the general statute of limitations under § 5-101 of the Courts Article.” Id. To properly be consistent with the general statute of limitations for civil actions under
Lastly, this outcome properly balances the State’s significant interest in being put on notice of potential suit because the State is protected by the one-year administrative
For all the foregoing reasons, we hold
THE JUDGMENT OF THE CIRCUIT COURT FOR BALTIMORE CITY IS REVERSED. COSTS TO BE PAID BY THE MAYOR AND CITY COUNCIL OF BALTIMORE.