by

I was musing on the Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog yesterday that I thought it was a better practice for Maryland to follow what appears to the Connecticut model keeping out names of parties if the subject matter is sensitive. Coincidentally, the 2nd Circuit ruled this week that a woman seeking to bring sexual assault lawsuit pro se under a pseudonym may continue to bring her case anonymously.

This is obviously a more intricate issue that what names should be used in appellate court opinions. And I’m not one of these big privacy people. I’m perfectly fine with the FBI listening to any conversation I have, for example. I don’t care. But it just seems so easy to take people’s actual names out of appellate court opinions. Sure, the names are a part of the public record. But if you are a doctor who has a great career and makes one malpractice mistake before he retires, should he have to spend his retirement seeing the case’s facts laid out for all to see anytime someone Googles his name?

by

The Maryland Daily Record reports that Anne Arundel County District Court Judge Robert C. Wilcox apologized on Friday for saying earlier this month that he did not trust the victim in an assault case because she had sex with the defendant 10 days after the accident.

There must be a part of this story that is missing. Isn’t it relevant if you sleep you’re your attacker 10 days after you claim they assaulted you? I’m not saying it would necessarily mandate a defense verdict in every case. It depends on all the facts. We know that some victims of domestic violence return to their abusers many times before leaving them for good. Here, what if Judge Wilcox made the right call, and this behavior was a deciding factor in his ruling?

I hate the overuse of the phrase “politically correct” which is never used in a way that is meant to be complimentary. I believe more often than not being politically correct requires us to be a little extra sensitive to each other. This can’t be a bad thing. But if Judge Wilcox cannot give an honest ruling based on the facts and instead has to use code words to describe how he found as he did, transparent administration of justice will lose a step.

Continue reading

by

The Maryland Court of Appeals ruled yesterday in favor of an adoptive lesbian mother, denying visitation rights to her former partner.

Here are the facts in a nutshell: Two women, identified as Janice M. and Margaret K. by the court, met in 1986. After in vitro fertilization attempts failed, the couple adopted a child from India. India prohibits same-sex adoptions, so Janice adopted the child without her partner obtaining legal status. Presumably, Margaret relied on their long-term relationship to assume that no legal formalities were required. Besides, there is no Maryland case law or statute addressing whether same-sex parents may adopt children. But we know in practice that many Maryland same-sex couples adopt children, notwithstanding the lack of legal approbation. Here, both Janice and Margaret were acting as the child’s parents, dividing up responsibilities for caring for the child.

After an eighteen-year relationship, the couple separated in 2004. Janice kept the house and physical custody of the child, but Margaret continued to see the child three or four times a week. Not surprisingly, Janice soon wielded her legal status as the mother over Margaret, setting new conditions for visitation and requiring details as to who would be with the child during visitation. Reading between the lines, I suspect Margaret was the one that ended the relationship.

Continue reading

by

In December, I wrote about concerns that had been raised regarding Baltimore County Bruce S. Lamdin’s conduct on the bench. Today, the Maryland Court of Appeals suspended Judge Lamdin for 30 days.

The court’s opinion provides over a dozen comments for which Judge Lamdin was disciplined. The comments seem to fall in one of five categories:

(1) Disparaging children – Judge Lamdin said that he does not like children and does not want them in his courtroom. You cannot tell from the transcript whether he is serious, half-serious or kidding. I have three kids but I really don’t take offense to someone saying they don’t like kids. His loss, but I don’t find such remarks offensive. Maryland Lawyer Blog Score: Who cares?

Continue reading

by

Overlawyered has a blog post today about the reports of a high school pitcher suing his school district because he wore out his arm throwing 140 pitches in a single game. Here is the gist of the story from the Seattle Times: Seven years ago, Plaintiff was pitching against a rival school. He had no plans to take himself out of the game. In the eighth inning his mother, assuming you believe her story, told coach, “He’s at 117 pitches. He’s done.” (How many mothers out there are keeping exact pitch counts?) You know the rest of the story. The Plaintiff hurts his arm. He thinks he was the next coming of Roger Clemens… better make that Greg Maddux… and files suit claiming the coach should have pulled him out of the game.

Overlawyered and the Maryland Lawyer Blog agree that the possibility of a lawsuit causes people to act differently than they otherwise would. Where we disagree is whether, on balance, this is a good thing for society. For example, football coaches now know that depriving kids of water during practice is a bad thing and their doing so may expose the school to liability. In this area I think coaches already have proper incentive to do the right thing and this will only serve to exaggerate the risk of a “pitch count” lawsuit. Even if this is what I believe is the first lawsuit of its kind in this country. Obviously every baseball coach around the country is going to be talking about this and many are going to become worried about pitch counts.

Awareness of valid lawsuits properly encourages people (including doctors) to proceed with caution and to consider the risks that may cause harm. Frivolous lawsuits like this one have the opposite effect and are going to have some coaches – a small minority but still some – overreacting and limiting kids to ridiculously low pitch counts. But just as free speech requires us to tolerate hate speech, the search for justice requires us to tolerate some level of frivolous lawsuits. Whatever inertia this country has towards tort reform, it comes in no small measure from mainstream media and Internet reports (many of which are simply false) of ridiculous lawsuits.

Continue reading

by

“The Maryland Lawyer” section of the Maryland Daily Record today has an interesting article on the impact of the economic slowdown on Maryland lawyers and the fears of law students looking for a job. The article reports that a number of law firms nationally are “axing” lawyers, including Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP, Dechert LLP, Clifford Chance LLP, and Thelen, Reid, Brown, Raysman & Steiner LLP. (I had originally included McKee Nelson LLP on the list because they were included in the Daily Record article. I have since been corrected by email by them that “McKee Nelson conducted a voluntary program last October through which a number of capital markets lawyers volunteered to take partially paid sabbaticals to work for not-for-profits, transfer to other areas of practice, take buyouts, or seek jobs with our clients.”) Other firms such as Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP are limiting their summer associates and Sonnenschein, Nath & Rosenthal LLP has taken back job offers, presumably to incoming lawyers.

To really scare big firm lawyers, the article mentions the 1992 dissolution of the Baltimore mega law firm of Frank, Bernstein, Conaway & Goldman.You can always gauge the legal market in Maryland by the reaction to the mention of the Frank, Bernstein, Conaway & Goldman breakup. In the best of times, the mention of that ghost brings on “That could never happen to us” chuckles. During a bad legal market in Baltimore, any mention of that dissolved firm evokes some response in a self-conscious “That could not happen to us. Right? Right?” tone.

The prospect of the collapse of one of Baltimore’s major law firms would be very unlikely because today big law firms are run more like a real business than they were in 1992. As this article points out, Frank Bernstein probably could have been saved if they had terminated partners, an unseemly practice in 1992 but de jour today. The old days of making partner and becoming a “made man” are long gone, which makes a lot more economic sense for a law firm facing a downturn in the market.

Continue reading

by

The Maryland Daily Record has an article in its Maryland Lawyer section this morning on associate retention in Baltimore law firms. It amazed me to read that one lawyer, who is on his third job, expressed dismay that his two previous law firms never asked him about the work he wanted to do. He says he was told, “Here are the cases we have, here are the clients we have and we’ll give you the work.” He complained that no one ever asked him, “What do you want to do?’” he said.

Tragically, these law firms only gave him the work that it had, not the work he wanted. Our law firm handles only personal injury cases. But if we had a lawyer who said, “Hey, I don’t want to handle personal injury work, I want to do mergers and acquisitions,” we would run out and immediately pick up JP Morgan or Bear Stearns as clients. Are you telling me every law firm does not operate this way?

These cold sweatshop law firms that do not allow you to pick the work and the clients you want to do are the same kinds of law firms that expect you to come to work on rainy days like today. The inhumanity!

by

A new child car seat law, Maryland Senate Bill 789, passed at the end of the Maryland legislative session last night at 9:10 p.m. Children in Maryland will now be required to remain in car seats until their 8th birthday unless they are over 65 lbs or over 4 feet, 9 inches tall.

This is a good development for child safety in Maryland. We are now a long way from bouncing up and down in the back of our parents station wagon.

by

There was an interesting article today in the Maryland Lawyer section of the Maryland Daily Record about a $1.2 million verdict rendered last week in a Baltimore truck accident case.

The Plaintiff suffered a fractured vertebra, a fractured elbow, and hurt his ankle in the accident. The vertebra was eventually removed and from now on the Plaintiff, who was a foreman at Severn Cable, can only perform light-duty work. Incredibly, before trial, the Defendant offered $475,000.00, and the Plaintiff demanded $500,000.00. Rarely do cases of this size cannot resolve when only $25,000.00 separates the parties. But in this case, the parties and their counsel, Bill Ober of the Law Offices of Matt M. Paavola and Milton P. Warren for the Plaintiff and Mary Malloy Dimaio from the Law Office of Maher and Associates (in house counsel for AIG and all the American International Companies), dug their feet in over the $25,000.00.

In a case like this, authority is often in a pretty round number. It is possible that someone—either the lawyer or the adjuster below the decision-maker—had the full $500,000.00 in authority and chose not to offer it. If this was the case in this truck accident claim, that lawyer or adjuster has a lot of explaining to do.

Continue reading