BALTIMORE — A federal judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by the families of three Baltimore firefighters who died in 2022 after being wounded while fighting a Stricker Street blaze.

The lawsuit, filed by the families of the deceased firefighters as well as another who survived the vacant rowhouse collapse, alleged that Baltimore officials had effectively put firefighters into a “death trap” of their own creation. But the complaint did not successfully argue that Lt. Paul Butrim, Lt. Kelsey Sadler, EMT/Firefighter Kenny Lacayo, and Firefighter John McMaster had their rights violated by a state-created danger, U.S. District Judge Matthew Maddox ruled.

In his Dec. 9 opinion, Maddox noted that the facts in the complaint, which alleged Baltimore officials had “intentionally exposed” the firefighters to dangerous vacant buildings, were “tragic and alarming.” He ruled, however, that he was constrained as far as allowing the case to proceed.

“Plainly, Plaintiffs do not allege that the City sent [the firefighters] into the Property on January 24, 2022, with the intent to injure them,” Maddox wrote.

An attorney representing the plaintiffs said they intend to refile the case.

Butrim, Sadler and Lacayo died, and McMaster was seriously injured, after the vacant rowhome in the Mount Clare neighborhood collapsed while they were fighting a fire from the inside in January 2022. Attorneys representing McMaster and the families of the three deceased firefighters had sent the city a notice in late 2022 of their intention to file a lawsuit. They filed the lawsuit this May.

A Baltimore Sun investigation found the city’s vacant properties burn at twice the national rate. However, recordkeeping gaps limited what firefighters knew before entering burning structures. Three firefighters were also injured in 2015 when the vacant property at 205 S. Stricker St. partially collapsed, but the building was not marked as unsafe when the crew arrived on Jan. 24, 2022.

The lawsuit alleged that through Baltimore officials’ longstanding neglect of vacant houses and failure to mark unsafe buildings, they had effectively created a “city-created death trap” for the crew that responded to the Mount Clare blaze. The city, however, had convinced firefighters that protections were in place, the lawsuit alleged.

Another fast-growing vacant rowhome blaze killed two more Baltimore firefighters in 2023. The Linden Heights fire prompted more policy changes and was ultimately deemed accidental.

A scathing report on the 2022 blaze found that the city lacked policies on vacant buildings at the time of the fire. Former Baltimore Fire Chief Niles Ford resigned abruptly after the report was released.

The report recommended that city officials reinstate a 2010 city program aimed at marking dangerous vacant buildings with “X” placards. The program, Code X-Ray, never formally ended, though the use of the placards was halted by 2012 after residents and community leaders complained that the signs were tarnishing the reputations of certain communities.

“After duping its firefighters into continuing their employment on a false factual predicate, the city deliberately exposed those unsuspecting firefighters to the city-created risk,” the complaint filed earlier this year reads, claiming the fatal collapse “was no accident.”

But the facts alleged in the complaint, even when viewed in a light most favorable to the plaintiffs, did not “support a reasonable inference that the city took any affirmative act with the intent to harm” the firefighters, falling below the standard to allege a violation of due process in the context of employment, Maddox wrote in his opinion.

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