Blackburn Limited Partnership v. Paul: The Birth of Maryland’s Statute or Ordinance Rule and Its Ill-Defined “Targeted Class” Requirement

Monica Basche

In Blackburn Limited Partnership v. Paul, the Maryland Court of Appeals considered a premises liability case in which a young boy nearly drowned in an apartment complex's pool. The court applied a rule unique to Maryland, the Statute or Ordinance Rule, largely as a result of their reluctance to change the common law. Though ultimately arriving at the right result, the court's misreading of Maryland's traditional rule governing negligence claims arising from statutory violations led it to erroneously maintain two conflicting rules. The court failed to consider that maintaining contradictory rules governing the effects of the violation of a statute or ordinance could lead to inconsistent and unpredictable results. The court also erred in failing to provide clear guidelines for when a statute, ordinance, or regulation protects a more “targeted class” of persons, one of the Statute or Ordinance Rule's requirements. The Court of Appeals should have provided clear guidelines for the Statute or Ordinance Rule's “targeted class” requirement. The court should also have expressly acknowledged that it was changing its handling of negligence claims arising from statutory violations. Taking these two steps would have allowed Maryland's General Assembly to draft legislation accordingly and would have allowed plaintiffs and defendants to better predict when a statute will be used to impose civil liability.