Kee v. State Highway Administration

ALPERT, Judge.

No precept of the common law was more imperviously etched in stone than the notion “that the king himself can do no wrong ...” 1 —the major premise of the doctrine of sovereign immunity. Although the doctrine is no longer sacrosanct, it continues to give rise to knotty legal problems, one with which we are confronted in the case at bar. Here, we must review the Maryland Tort Claims Act, which waives sovereign immunity in certain actions to the extent the State is covered by liability insurance, and determine whether the State waived its immunity when it failed to purchase…