Rescuing Maryland Tort Law: A Tribute to Judge Sally Adkins

Donald G. Gifford

This is an unconventional tribute. I have never worked closely with Judge Sally Adkins. Indeed, if my memory is correct, my contact with her has been limited to a couple of personal conversations, separated by approximately a quarter-century, and three telephone conversations, two of which focused on her selection of judicial clerks. However, during the past five years, when teaching Torts and related courses at the University of Maryland Carey School of Law, I frequently praised her work. My students read her opinions; opinions that stand out among Maryland torts jurisprudence because they uniquely echo and respond to changes in tort law that swept most of the remainder of American jurisdictions between 1965 and 1985 but had previously been ignored by the Maryland courts.

Not even a torts professor like me could have “foreseen” that Judge Adkins would emerge as my personal judicial heroine. Her pre-bench legal practice in Salisbury, Maryland, rarely involved tort matters. As expected, her opinions in torts cases while a member of the Court of Special Appeals of Maryland were often fact-specific and faithfully applied the law of precedents from the Court of Appeals of Maryland. Even in her early years on the Court of Appeals, her opinions in torts cases gave little hint of the groundbreaking decisions that would follow.