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Maryland does not recognize the attractive nuisance doctrine, so no swimming pool, trampoline, or construction site carries that legal label here. That answer surprises most parents, because the phrase appears on injury websites across the country. Maryland courts have declined to adopt the doctrine for more than a century, and they decide these cases under ordinary premises liability rules instead. None of that leaves an injured child’s family without a claim. A Maryland premises liability attorney will focus on where the child was allowed to be and whether a safety regulation was violated, because those two questions decide most of these cases.
The Rule Maryland Applies Instead
The leading case is a pool drowning. In Osterman v. Peters, decided in 1971, a four-and-a-half-year-old boy drowned in a neighbor’s swimming pool at a vacant house while trying to retrieve a ball with a friend. The Court of Appeals of Maryland, now called the Supreme Court of Maryland, affirmed a directed verdict for the pool owners.
The court restated the Maryland rule plainly. A landowner owes no duty to a trespasser or a bare licensee, “even one of tender years,” except to abstain from willful or wanton misconduct or entrapment. Trespassing children, the court said, take the premises as they find them. The court noted that Maryland rejects the attractive nuisance doctrine without qualification.
Read the rule closely and you can see what it turns on. For a trespassing child, it turns on status, not on what drew the child in. A child who was allowed to be there stands in a very different position.
Where the Child Was Allowed to Be
Maryland sorts everyone who enters property into categories, and the category sets the duty the property owner has. Because that classification decides most child injury cases, it is the first thing we pin down.
- Invitee: the highest duty. The owner must use reasonable and ordinary care to keep the premises safe and to protect the visitor from an unreasonable risk the visitor will not discover through ordinary care.
- Licensee by invitation, also called a social guest: The host must exercise reasonable care to make the premises safe or warn of known dangers the guest cannot reasonably discover.
- Bare licensee: Someone present without an invitation, who is owed the same limited duty as a trespasser.
- Trespasser: No duty beyond abstaining from willful or wanton misconduct or entrapment.
Status is not fixed for the day. A child can be an invitee in one part of a property and a trespasser in another, so where the injury happened matters as much as why the child was there.
A 2019 decision shows how this plays out. An 8-year-old visiting his grandparents climbed a 5-foot stone community sign in the common area of their condominium complex, and a flat stone dislodged and fell on him. The Court of Special Appeals, now the Appellate Court of Maryland, held that he remained an invitee. Climbing a climbable object in an area where he was allowed to be did not turn him into a trespasser.
The family still lost, and that half of the decision matters just as much. There was no evidence the association or the management company knew or should have known the stone was loose. Even for an invitee, a Maryland plaintiff must prove the owner had actual or constructive notice of the dangerous condition.
One line in that decision is easy to miss. Maryland’s refusal to adopt the attractive nuisance doctrine does not relieve an owner of the duty to consider the capacity of children to understand dangers when exercising reasonable care toward invitees. A child’s age, and what a child is naturally drawn to, can matter a great deal in this state. What they cannot do is create a duty to a trespasser where none exists.
When a Safety Regulation Creates a Duty Anyway
Here is the part most articles on this topic leave out, and it is the most useful rule for an injured child’s family. A duty can come from a regulation even when the common law would give a trespassing child nothing.
In a 2014 decision involving an apartment complex pool, a 3-year-old suffered a severe anoxic brain injury in a near-drowning at the complex where his family lived. The property owner argued the child was a trespasser and was owed nothing, and it won summary judgment on that theory. Maryland’s highest court disagreed and sent the case back for trial, applying a rule that has been part of Maryland law since 1916.
- The defendant violated a statute, ordinance, or regulation designed to protect a specific class of people that includes the injured person.
- That violation proximately caused the injury.
When both parts are satisfied, the violation is prima facie evidence of negligence rather than negligence per se. The family still has to prove the violation and the causal link. What changes is that the case is no longer decided at the gate by the child’s status.
The court held that Maryland’s pool rules incorporate a barrier code written specifically to protect young children, and that the resulting duty applies irrespective of the child’s legal status on the property. Maryland’s pool barrier requirements still say a gate opening may not allow the passage of a sphere 4 inches in diameter. The court concluded a jury could reasonably find the child slipped through that gate. One caution belongs with the rule. Those regulations govern apartment, condominium, and community pools, and they do not reach a private pool behind a single-family home.
The Hazards Families Ask About Most
Parents usually call us naming one specific hazard, so it helps to say how Maryland treats each.
- Swimming pools: Never an attractive nuisance in Maryland. A community or apartment pool can still support a claim through the barrier regulations described above.
- Construction sites: No special child doctrine applies. Status and any violated safety regulation control the analysis.
- Trampolines, heavy machinery, and abandoned buildings: The same analysis. For a trespassing child, the pull these things have adds nothing legally.
- Common areas of an apartment or condominium complex: Often the strongest position for a family, because residents and their guests are generally invitees there.
The label on the hazard matters far less than where the child was permitted to be and what safety rule the owner had to follow.
Two Maryland Rules That Can End a Strong Case
Maryland is a contributory negligence state, and that is unusual. If an injured person failed to use ordinary care and that failure proximately contributed to the injury, the person can be barred from recovering anything, even where the property owner was far more at fault. Courts do not apply that standard to a young child the way they apply it to an adult. In the 2019 condominium case described above, the trial judge declined to find that the 8-year-old was contributorily negligent or had assumed the risk. Insurance defense teams still raise the issue early and press it hard.
The deadline is the second trap. Most Maryland injury claims must be filed within three years. The child’s claim is treated differently, and the filing period generally runs from the date the disability is removed, which usually gives the child until age 21. That relief is narrower than parents assume. Claims against a county, a city, or a state agency carry separate written notice requirements on a different timetable.
Talk With Our Laurel Injury Team
When a child is badly hurt on someone else’s property, the useful questions are not about whether the hazard was attractive. They are about where your child was allowed to be, what rules the owner had to follow, and what evidence still exists before a gate is repaired or a fence is replaced. Those answers rarely come from the insurance company.
McGowan & Cecil, LLC has handled personal injury claims across the Baltimore and Washington region since 2001, including families facing catastrophic injuries that will need care for a lifetime. Every client is assigned at least one attorney and one paralegal, and we work on a contingency fee, so there is no legal fee unless we recover for you. Contact our office for a free consultation.