ANNAPOLIS, Md. (Legal Newsline) – It doesn’t take an expert to realize the risk of fire presented by cigarette butts tossed into mulch.
That was the ruling of the Maryland Court of Appeals on July 27 in a case that asked whether a landowner had a legal obligation to prevent the spread of fire to neighboring properties. The landowner does, the court ruled in an opinion written by Judge Brynja McDivitt Booth.
“Under the facts presented, there was evidence from which a jury could determine that Steamfitters had actual or constructive knowledge that hundreds of cigarettes had been discarded in the mulched common area along the property line, which created a foreseeable risk of fire spread to the neighboring properties,” Booth wrote.
A 2015 fire started in Capitol Heights on property owned by Steamfitters Local Union No. 602 and spread along a fence that separated it from a construction yard owned by Gordon Contractors. The fire damaged Gordon’s property and another adjacent lot.
It started where Steamfitters’ apprentices regularly met for hours at a time before training classes in the union hall. Hundreds of cigarette butts were discovered in the mulch.
Gordon’s insurers sued Steamfitters for almost $1.3 million, and they were successful in a jury trial. Steamfitters appealed and lost in the Court of Special Appeals and, now, the state’s highest court.
Steamfitters argued it didn’t owe a duty to its neighbors and expert testimony would be required to prove it did.
“The jury was free to use their common knowledge and experience to consider how this fire could have been prevented, such as implementing a no-smoking policy on the property, removing the mulch, creating a designated smoking area in another location on the property where the ground material did not consist of combustible materials, or any number of reasonable options in light of the activity that Steamfitters knew, or should have known, was habitually transpiring on its property,” Booth wrote.