‘Design decision’ immunizes Baltimore City from bike injury lawsuit, MD Supreme Court rules

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Baltimore City is immune from a negligence lawsuit brought by a man who was injured while riding his bike, the Maryland Supreme Court ruled last month, because he was challenging a “design decision.”

The state’s high court in December ruled that Sanjeev Varghese — who was injured at dusk one evening in October 2018 when he rode his bike into a cable he didn’t see — can’t sue the city over a discretionary design feature.

The cable stretched between bollards, creating a barrier between the Inner Harbor Promenade and a road near the Institute of Marine and Environmental Technology. Other visual cues — steps and railings — made Varghese believe he could cross from the road to the promenade.

Varghese argued not that the city failed to maintain the barrier, but that the design itself created a hazard and required clearer signage. He contended the city had received notice that it was a known hazard, because another biker had been injured in a similar way a year earlier and sent a demand letter to the city.

Baltimore City argued it was entitled to government immunity because the claim was based on the design of the barrier, not its maintenance.

The Baltimore City Circuit Court ruled the city didn’t have immunity. A jury found the city negligent and awarded damages to Varghese. A three-judge Maryland Appellate Court panel unanimously affirmed. The Maryland Supreme Court, however, ruled in favor of the city as a matter of law, rather than remanding the case back to the circuit court for a new trial.

“To be sure, the City could have made different decisions with a greater emphasis on safety,” Supreme Court Chief Justice Matthew Fader wrote. “But its discretionary decision is entitled to judicial deference under our longstanding governmental immunity framework.”

Cities’ design decisions are generally immune from tort claims, but there is an exception for decisions affecting paved public ways.

Fader wrote that cities are immune when performing “governmental” functions, as opposed to “proprietary” ones, and that design decisions count as “governmental” functions, even if they’re related to paved public ways. But Fader acknowledged there exists a great deal of “difficulty and confusion surrounding the governmental-proprietary distinction.”

All seven justices sided with the city, but Justice Peter Killough wrote separately to concur in part and dissent in part.

Killough wrote that the majority was right to reverse the appellate court’s ruling that cities’ design decisions are ordinarily immune, but argued the decision should have rested on the ground that the jury wasn’t instructed on cities’ duty to warn the public about design hazards.

Killough wrote that the case should have been remanded for a new trial, rather than ruling in favor of the city as a matter of law.

Allen Honick, who represents Varghese, said he would file a motion for reconsideration. He said the ruling creates uncertainty in municipal liability claims by allowing cities to claim a hazard arises from a “design decision,” thus allowing them to ignore notice of injury.

The ruling, Honick said, means “they can just leave the hazard there forever now.”

The opinion was actually not the court’s first ruling of 2025 in personal-injury cases arising from bike accidents at Baltimore’s Inner Harbor Promenade in 2018. The biker won the other one.

In that case, one of a biker’s tires got stuck in a gap between the brick promenade and the granite retaining wall, and she was flung into the water. She sustained injuries and sued the city for negligence.

In July, the court unanimously ruled that a state recreation law did not shield the city from negligence claims. The Maryland Recreational Use Statute — which encourages property owners to open their property to the public by protecting them from tort liability — didn’t protect the city, the court ruled, because the promenade is used for transportation in addition to mere recreation.