Filing an Injury Claim in Maryland: The All-or-Nothing Fault Rule You Need to Know First

In most of the country, being partly at fault for an accident reduces what you can recover. In Maryland, it can erase it entirely. If you take one thing away from this page, take that — because it changes how you should handle every conversation that follows an injury here.

The rule almost nobody else still uses

Maryland is one of only four states — alongside Alabama, North Carolina, and Virginia, plus the District of Columbia — that still follows pure contributory negligence. Under this doctrine, if the other side can show you were even slightly responsible for your own injury, your claim can be barred completely. Not reduced. Barred. A driver who was overwhelmingly at fault can, in principle, escape liability entirely if a jury pins even a sliver of the blame on you.

This is not an old rule quietly fading away. Maryland’s highest court reaffirmed it in 2013 in Coleman v. Soccer Association of Columbia, concluding that any change should come from the General Assembly — and as of 2026, the legislature has not made that change. One quirk worth knowing if you go reading the case law yourself: the court that decided Coleman was then called the Court of Appeals of Maryland. After voters approved a constitutional amendment in 2022, it is now the Supreme Court of Maryland, and the state’s intermediate court became the Appellate Court of Maryland. Older articles and opinions use the old names for the same courts.

Why this makes early phone calls so dangerous

In a comparative-fault state, an insurance adjuster who convinces you to accept 20% of the blame has shaved 20% off the payout. In Maryland, an adjuster who gets you to concede any share of fault has an argument to pay you nothing. That asymmetry shapes how claims are handled here: insurers lean hard on contributory negligence, and a friendly-sounding recorded statement taken in the first week is one of their favorite places to find it.

The good news is that a fault argument is not a fault finding. Contributory negligence is a defense the other side has to prove, and it is very often contestable. Maryland also recognizes doctrines that can soften the rule in the right facts — most notably last clear chance, which can preserve a claim where the defendant had a fresh, final opportunity to avoid the harm and failed to take it. Whether anything like that applies to your situation is exactly the kind of question a licensed Maryland attorney should answer, not an adjuster.

Practically, the rule means a few habits matter more in Maryland than almost anywhere else:

• Do not speculate about fault at the scene — not to the other driver, not to the police beyond the facts, and especially not to an insurance company.
• Decline recorded statements to the other side’s insurer until you have had qualified advice. You are generally not obligated to give one.
• Preserve evidence early. Photos, witness contacts, camera footage, and a prompt police report are what beat a manufactured shared-fault story later.

The clock: three years, generally

Maryland gives injured people more time than many states. Under Md. Code, Courts and Judicial Proceedings § 5-101, a civil action generally must be filed within three years from the date the claim accrues. In many injury cases that means three years from the date of the accident, though Maryland courts apply a discovery-based approach in some situations where an injury or its cause was not reasonably knowable right away.

Three years sounds generous, and compared with the one- and two-year windows elsewhere, it is — you can see how Maryland stacks up in our state-by-state statute of limitations guide. But exceptions cut both ways. Some claims, including medical malpractice and claims involving minors, run on their own timelines, and waiting years to act lets evidence and witnesses disappear even when the deadline itself is safe. Treat three years as an outer wall, not a schedule.

Suing the government is a different game entirely

If your injury involves a state agency, a county, a city, a public school, or a government vehicle, the three-year lawsuit deadline is not the number to worry about first. Maryland layers notice requirements on top of it:

• Under the Maryland Tort Claims Act, claims against the State generally require written notice to the State Treasurer within one year of the injury.
• Under the Local Government Tort Claims Act, claims against local governments generally require written notice — stating the time, place, and cause of the injury — within one year as well.

Miss the notice window and the claim can be lost long before the lawsuit deadline ever arrives. Government-involved cases — a collision with a county vehicle, a fall at a public facility, an incident involving a transit bus — are a category where talking to someone quickly is not just prudent, it is structural.

Fault state, with a small PIP twist

Maryland is not a no-fault auto insurance state. After a crash, the at-fault driver — through their liability insurance — is generally responsible for the harm they caused, and there is no injury threshold you must clear before you are allowed to bring a claim. That puts fault evidence at the center of every Maryland crash case, which loops right back to the contributory negligence problem above.

One wrinkle: Maryland insurers generally must offer a modest amount of personal injury protection (PIP), which pays certain early medical bills and lost wages regardless of fault, unless you waived it in writing. Unlike in true no-fault states, carrying PIP does not limit your right to pursue the at-fault driver. Many Marylanders do not realize they have this coverage; it is worth checking your policy before assuming every bill has to wait for the liability claim.

Damage caps — and a live fight over them

Maryland caps non-economic damages — pain, suffering, and similar losses — in personal injury and wrongful death cases under Courts and Judicial Proceedings § 11-108, with the cap amount adjusting upward each October 1. Medical malpractice cases have their own separate cap under a different provision. Economic losses like medical bills and lost income are generally not capped.

This is an area to watch: bills to repeal or restructure the non-economic damages cap were introduced in the General Assembly’s 2025 and 2026 sessions, and the debate is active. As of this writing the caps remain in place, but the current figures and any legislative changes are exactly the sort of detail to confirm with a licensed Maryland attorney — or to check against our Maryland quick-reference page, where we track the state’s core rules at a glance.

What this all adds up to

Maryland pairs one of the longest general filing windows in the region with the harshest fault rule in American law and a pair of one-year notice traps for government cases. The pattern is clear: the deadline is rarely what sinks a Maryland claim. Early missteps on fault are. The people who do well here are the ones who document everything, say little, and get a qualified opinion before the other side’s version of events hardens into the official one.

If you were hurt in Maryland and want to know whether you may have a claim, answer a few questions about what happened and we will connect you with a participating law firm that handles Maryland cases. It is free, confidential, and there is no obligation.