BIDDEFORD — On Dec. 4, York County Superior Court Justice Paul Fritzsche approved the motion to dismiss a case brought against the city of Biddeford by Valerie Page, who alleged the city hadn’t properly maintained the pathway that her late husband, Sean Page, was crossing when he was struck and killed by an Amtrak Downeaster train in the spring of 2012.

The motion was filed in May of this year, just over a month after Page filed her complaint against the city. Fritzche dismissed the case with prejudice, according to a city manager’s report from mid-December, meaning the case cannot be brought against the city again.

Fritzche’s decision came after an examination of state law, which provides a comprehensive explanation for when a plaintiff can and cannot sue a municipality. Under the Maine Tort Claims Act, there are only four circumstances, or theories, under which a plaintiff can sue a municipality, Michael E. Saucier, an attorney at the Portland-based law firm Thompson and Bowie, who represented the city, explained during a phone interview Saturday. Under any other circumstances, he said, municipalities are immune from lawsuits.

Since Page had claimed the common-law tort of negligence against the city, the case was governed by the state’s Tort Claims Act, according to court documents.

“What Mrs. Page and her attorney were trying to do was to place their case in one of the four theories that permit lawsuits against municipalities,” said Saucier. But the one they chose, he said, required the city to have been “actively engaged in construction or repair of public ways” at the time and in the area of the incident, and that wasn’t the case.

The theory on which Page and her attorney tried to base their case is the fourth exception to a municipality’s immunity from lawsuits listed in the Maine Tort Claims Act, which reads: “A governmental entity is liable for its negligent acts … arising out of and occurring during the performance of construction, street cleaning or repair operations on any highway, town way, sidewalk, parking area, causeway, bridge, airport runway or taxiway, including appurtenances necessary for the control of those ways including, but not limited to, street signs, traffic lights, parking meters and guardrails.”

Page and her attorney claimed that the city had improperly maintained the pathway where Sean Page was killed, which crosses the railroad tracks and connects West Cutts and Cutts streets, by failing to place signs warning of the train or a gate there, according to court documents. But for the complaint to have been upheld, “the law requires that the city (had been) actively engaged in construction or repair” in the area in question, said Saucier.

Lawsuits are typically filed under this theory when a municipality is repairing a sidewalk, for example, but it has not provided sufficient barricades around the construction zone and a person is injured because of it, said Saucier, or when a city flagger gives the wrong signal, leading to a car accident. In these cases, he said, the city must be tangibly “negligent in whatever caused the accident.”

When considering a motion to dismiss, the court “examines the claims in the light most favorable to the plaintiff,” according to court documents, and a dismissal is only warranted when “it appears beyond a doubt” that the plaintiff has not made a valid complaint. In this case, the dismissal was simply a matter of determining what the law dictates, said Saucier.

“Judge Fritzsche looked at the law and concluded that the city was correct,” he said.

Page’s case against Amtrak, Inc., on the other hand, remains ongoing, and it will either be dismissed or heard in the near future, according to Saucier.

— Staff Writer Angelo J. Verzoni can be contacted at 282-1535 or averzoni@journaltribune.com.