Injured as a Child in Maryland State Custody? A New Ruling Says Your Three-Year Clock Doesn’t Start Until You Turn 18
On July 2, 2026, the Appellate Court of Maryland handed down a decision that quietly rescued a category of cases that had been dying on a technicality: injury claims brought by young people who were hurt while in the custody or care of the State of Maryland.
The case is Cameron Cunningham v. State of Maryland, et al., No. 0216, Sept. Term 2025, decided by Chief Judge Wells. You can read the full opinion here:
- Official opinion PDF — Appellate Court of Maryland
- Case page — Maryland Judiciary
- Cunningham v. State, et al. on Justia
What happened
In October 2019, Baltimore County police arrested Cameron Cunningham at his high school. He was sixteen years old. According to his complaint, he suffered a severe injury to his left knee during the arrest. He was taken to a hospital, treated, and released into the custody of the Maryland Department of Juvenile Services with specific written instructions from his doctors for follow-up care.
He was then in State custody for more than a year. He alleges that during that time, the State never gave him the physician-ordered care his knee needed.
Cunningham turned eighteen on November 15, 2021. On November 11, 2024, he sued the State, the Department of Juvenile Services, and the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services for negligence and gross negligence. That was five years after the injury — but less than three years after his eighteenth birthday.
The State moved to dismiss, and the Circuit Court for Baltimore City threw the case out as too late.
The legal trap
Most Maryland injury cases have a three-year deadline. And Maryland law has long protected children from losing claims they had no power to file: under Courts & Judicial Proceedings § 5-201, when a cause of action accrues in favor of a minor, the clock is paused — "tolled" — until the child turns 18. The reasoning is simple and humane. A child cannot walk into a courthouse and file a lawsuit. If a parent doesn't do it, no one does.
Suing the State of Maryland works differently. Because of sovereign immunity, the State can only be sued on the terms it has set for itself. The Maryland Tort Claims Act (MTCA) sets three of them, in State Government § 12-106(b):
- The claimant must submit a written claim to the State Treasurer within one year of the injury;
- The Treasurer must finally deny the claim; and
- The lawsuit must be filed within three years after the cause of action arises.
Here was the problem. In Higginbotham v. Public Service Commission, 412 Md. 112 (2009), the Supreme Court of Maryland described that three-year filing requirement as both a statute of limitations and a condition precedent to the State's waiver of sovereign immunity. Maryland courts toll statutes of limitations for minors. They do not toll conditions precedent.
So which was it? The trial court took the State's side, reasoning that even if minority tolled the limitations half of the statute, it did not toll the condition-precedent half — and the case was barred.
If that reasoning had stood, a child injured by the State at age six would have had to sue by age nine, or lose the claim entirely, before ever being legally capable of bringing it.
What the court held
The Appellate Court reversed. Its holding is direct: the minority tolling provision in CJ § 5-201 applies to the MTCA's three-year filing requirement. The clock is paused while the injured person is a minor. It starts running on the eighteenth birthday, and the person then has three years to file.
The court's reasoning rested on the General Assembly's own stated purpose. When the legislature added the three-year requirement in 1994, it said it did so to make MTCA deadlines "consistent with the general statute of limitations" under CJ § 5-101. As the court put it, to be genuinely consistent with that general statute, the MTCA has to carry the same minority tolling that the general statute carries.
The court was careful about what it was not doing. Sovereign immunity still matters, and the deadline is still real: once the three years after the eighteenth birthday run out, the State's waiver of immunity "vanishes" and the claim is gone for good. The court also emphasized that the State's interest in early notice is protected by a different provision — the one-year written claim to the Treasurer under § 12-106(b)(1) — which was not disputed in Cunningham and which the court described as remaining in effect as a condition precedent.
Because Cunningham sued within three years of turning eighteen, his suit was timely. The dismissal was reversed and his case goes forward.
What this means for injured people
If you were hurt as a minor by the State of Maryland or one of its agencies, your case may still be alive. Injuries in juvenile facilities, failures to provide medical care in State custody, injuries involving State employees — if you are under 21 today, or you turned 18 within the last three years, the deadline for the lawsuit itself may not have passed. That is worth a phone call.
Do not read this as permission to wait. Three critical cautions:
- The one-year written claim to the State Treasurer is a separate requirement, and Cunningham did not excuse it. It should be treated as a hard deadline running from the injury.
- Cunningham is about suing the State and its agencies. Suing a county or city in Maryland runs through a different statute — the Local Government Tort Claims Act — with its own one-year notice requirement under CJ § 5-304.
- Evidence does not wait for deadlines. Records get purged, cameras get overwritten, and staff move on. The strongest version of a case is the one investigated early.
Deadlines for injury claims against the government in D.C., Maryland, and Virginia
These deadlines are short, unforgiving, and different in every jurisdiction the firm practices in. This chart is a starting point, not a substitute for advice on your own case:
| You are suing | Notice deadline | Deadline to file suit | Governing statute |
|---|---|---|---|
| State of Maryland (and State agencies) | 1 year — written claim to the State Treasurer | 3 years after the claim arises — tolled during minority per Cunningham (2026) | Md. State Gov’t § 12-106(b); Md. Cts. & Jud. Proc. § 5-201 |
| Maryland county or city | 1 year — written notice to the designated county/city official | Generally 3 years | Md. Cts. & Jud. Proc. § 5-304 |
| District of Columbia | 6 months — written notice to the Mayor (a qualifying MPD report can satisfy this) | Generally 3 years | D.C. Code § 12-309; § 12-302 (minority) |
| Commonwealth of Virginia | 1 year — written statement to the Division of Risk Management or the Attorney General | Generally 2 years | Va. Code § 8.01-195.6; § 8.01-229(A) (minority) |
| Virginia county, city, or town | 6 months — written statement to the locality’s attorney, chief executive, or mayor | Generally 2 years | Va. Code § 15.2-209 |
Note how much tighter the notice windows are than the filing deadlines. In the District, a family that waits seven months to call a lawyer may have already lost a meritorious claim against the city. That six-month notice provision is strictly enforced, and you should not assume a child's age automatically excuses it.
Talk to us
Posey Lebowitz PLLC handles serious injury and civil rights cases in the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia — including cases against government agencies, which are among the most procedurally demanding cases there are. If you or your child was hurt in custody, in a government facility, or by a government employee, the sooner we can look at it, the more we can do.
Call us at (202) 524-0123 or use our contact form for a free consultation.
This article is general information, not legal advice about your case.
