Jackson v. Dackman Co., 422 Md. 357

Summary

The Maryland Court of Appeals held that provisions of the Reduction of Lead Risk in Housing Act granting certain rental-property owners immunity from personal-injury suits involving lead ingestion violated Article 19 of the Maryland Declaration of Rights. The court concluded that the immunity was not a traditional or well-established immunity and unreasonably restricted the plaintiffs' recognized tort remedy. The court therefore invalidated the immunity provisions and did not reach the parties' other issues.

Holdings

1. The immunity provisions of the Reduction of Lead Risk in Housing Act, including §§ 6-828, 6-835, 6-836, and 6-836.1, are invalid under Article 19 because they eliminate a traditional personal-injury remedy for negligently injured children while providing no remedy or only a drastically inadequate qualified-offer remedy.
2. The Act's invalid immunity provisions are severable from the remaining provisions of the Reduction of Lead Risk in Housing Act.

Questions Presented

1. Whether the Reduction of Lead Risk in Housing Act's immunity provisions violated Article 19 of the Maryland Declaration of Rights by eliminating or severely restricting a child's traditional personal-injury remedy without providing an adequate substitute.
2. Whether the invalid immunity provisions were severable from the remaining provisions of the Reduction of Lead Risk in Housing Act.
3. Whether the defendants timely complied with the Act's property-registration renewal requirements.
4. Whether the Act's immunity provisions were constitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment, Article 24 of the Maryland Declaration of Rights, the right to jury trial, and separation-of-powers principles.

Disposition

reversed_and_remanded