On the Record

Norman Holmes probably won’t have to think hard about a New Year’s resolution — Stay out of trouble. Unfortunately, chances are very good he’ll break his pledge sooner rather than later.

Holmes, 41, was sentenced to 90 days in jail in Cincinnati on Monday after his 109th misdemeanor conviction. He had no response when Judge Ted Berry asked, “Why don’t you be productive instead of stealing off people?”

Holmes’ pleaded guilty for stealing toothpaste from a convenience store three weeks ago. He was also wanted for stealing vodka, a screwdriver and an air freshener from another convenience store. Court records show a third of Holmes’ convictions were for theft, according to the Associated Press and Cincinnati Enquirer. He has also been to prison five times for minor felony charges.

DANNY JACOBS, Legal Affairs Writer

The January issue of Baltimore Magazine includes its annual salary survey. (Quick aside: try saying “salary survey” five times fast.)

The story quotes salaries for various law types: Baltimore City State’s Attorney Patricia C. Jessamy makes $230,000 per year; Scott D. Shellenberger, her Baltimore County counterpart, makes $195,000 annually; and a starting lawyer makes an average of more than $92,000.

The last figure surprised John B. Bratt of Miller & Zois LLC, who wrote Monday in the Baltimore Injury Lawyer Blog that he made $35,000 when he started practicing a decade ago.

“I can’t believe the salary landscape has changed that much in the last ten years,” Bratt wrote, adding the figure “sounds awfully high.”

The magazine says in the story it arrived at its numbers through interviews, government documents, business filings and various Web sites, among other sources.

My colleague Caryn Tamber reported in May that eight large Baltimore firms were paying first-year lawyers more than $100,000 annually. In August, she reported a national study showed the median starting salary for the class of 2007 was $66,000, with a quarter of the class making between $140,000 and $165,000 and almost half making between $40,000 and $60,000.

My guess is the six-figure salaries are outliers that push up the average starting salary deceivingly high and that the median, a more accurate measure for a whole group, is more in line with Bratt’s thinking. (Full disclosure: I’m hoping my logic also applies to a reporter’s average salary of approximately $65,000 as quoted in the magazine.)

What do you make of the $92,000 starting salary for lawyers?

DANNY JACOBS, Legal Affairs Writer

The News Journal of Wilmington has a story today about a guy who’s suing the Delaware prison system for (indirectly) killing his pet parrot.

Thomas Goodrich claims that when he was arrested on a misdemeanor warrant, he was not allowed to use the phone to raise bail or to ask someone to feed his birds. He alleges that, by the time he was able to get a stamp and write a letter to a friend, 10 days after his arrest, Freddy, a blue-and-gold macaw, had starved to death. (HT: How Appealing.)

Reporter Sean O’Sullivan writes:

Beyond the question of the deceased pet — and echoes of Monty Python’s dead parrot sketch — legal experts said Goodrich’s lawsuit raises a serious issue about the rights of an accused to secure his or her freedom, most commonly through a phone call.
…

[Legal experts] said that some kind of effort should have been made to allow Goodrich to contact the outside world — no matter what his reason.

“The ability to seek your freedom is a pretty basic thing,” [Widener Law professor Jules] Epstein said.

[Criminal defense lawyer Joe] Hurley noted other troubling things about Delaware prisons, including the state of inmate health care, but added that once a person ends up in the Young prison, “You are a lost cause for five days, generally.”

He said no one, not family or friends, will hear from you or about you while the staff processes the paperwork. “That is the way it is,” Hurley said, adding that Goodrich was lucky his situation involved a parrot “and not his child.”

Does anyone out there know whether this kind of thing happens in Maryland? Are arrestees basically incommunicado for days after they are picked up? Have there been similar suits in Maryland over pet deaths or other problems resulting from arrestees who are unable to contact someone on the outside?

CARYN TAMBER, Legal Affairs Writer

ON THE COVER: Despite efforts made by the state to reduce the disparity, Maryland’s prison population remains mostly black.

Legal Affairs writer Danny Jacobs writes about the recent Court of Appeals decision denying Trinity Assembly of God the right to build a huge electronic sign along the Baltimore Beltway, which marked the court’s first interpretation of the federal Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000.

In Breaking News, a multimillion dollar settlement of a class-action lawsuit between Gambrills residents and Constellation Energy Group over coal ash contamination awaits final approval; a federal judge allow a Stevensville man to proceed with his lawsuit against a deputy sheriff who had the man’s car — which was painted with swastikas — towed; and the Court of Special Appeals vacates a win by Greater Bloomfield Community Association against trucking facility New England Motor Freight.

An Anne Arundel County judge has ruled that electrical contracting company Central Armature Works Inc. is not liable for a November 2005 fire, writes Legal Affairs Writer Brendan Kearney.

In Unbillable Hours, Peter H. Gunst discusses how his love for chess prompted him to intervene when Fells Point Chess Club was about to lose its building.

Jack L.B. Gohn writes about life in Ann Arbor and the auto industry in The Big Picture.

The Editorial Advisory Board says its time for the General Assembly to act on state police surveillance of political dissidents.

Read lawyers’ reactions to “How many last names are too many for a law firm?”
 
Don’t miss our Law Digest this week with cases from the Maryland Court of Special Appeals, the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals and the Office of Administrative Hearings.

CHRISTINA DORAN, Assistant Legal Affairs Editor

A lot of Montgomery County residents have fallen victim to a speeding camera in our neighborhoods. Especially the one on Wootton Parkway in Rockville.

I know this because of the neverending traffic to Steve Lash’s blog post from May, where he announced that his minivan was caught doing 36 mph in a 25 mph school zone. (He, of course, was innocent).

As a Bethesda resident, the trap that lies in wait for me is on Connecticut Avenue in Chevy Chase. It hasn’t snapped me up yet, but it did get my colleague, Joe Bacchus, while he was visiting his father.

Here’s the bad news I’ve procrastinated — for those of you who live, work or visit MoCo: The Rockville PD is cracking down, and fast. Fourteen new speed camera traps have been set up, and warnings will be issued through Sunday. After that, it’s an automatic fine if you’re 11 mph or more over the speed limit.

Here are the new hotspots:

1. Glenora Lane
2. Hurley Avenue
3. Gerard Street
4. Dunster Road
5. Sunrise Drive
6. Cabin John Parkway
7. W. Edmonston Drive
8. Edmonston Drive
9. Grandin Avenue
10. Broadwood Drive
11. Ardennes Avenue
12. Fallsgrove Drive
13. Mannakee Street
14. Martins Lane

View Larger Map

Note: The points are plotted only on the street the camera is located on - not at the exact location of the camera. Be careful!

JACKIE SAUTER, Web Editor

Here’s to another abbreviated week!

• The York Daily Record/Sunday News editorializes about the lessons of the Michael Johnson case. (That’s the guy who allegedly masqueraded as a cop to rape women in York, Pa. and Baltimore. He posted bail in Pennsylvania, fled, then killed himself in New York.)

• The Sun ran a sad story over the weekend about an Iraq and Afghanistan veteran who committed suicide, a teacher accused of making inappropriate overtures to a 16-year-old student.

• The subtitle to Carolyn Elefant’s new e-book, “From Biglaw to Yourlaw,” is “You’ve always believed starting a firm was a last resort.  Now, it may be your only resort.” Eek.

• Here are the ABA Journal’s Top 10 stories of the year.

• Are deans of top-ranked law schools headhunting the best students at lower-ranked schools?

CARYN TAMBER, Legal Affairs Writer

I find it hard to believe that next year marks the 10-year anniversary of the Recording Industry Association of America’s (RIAA) lawsuit against music sharing giant Napster.  

Think about all of the advancements that have been made over the last decade in the way we listen to and discover music, through creations like the iPod, YouTube and social networking sites like MySpace and Purevolume. 

Before Napster, there wasn’t any other means — besides a computer– to store thousands of digital songs.

That’s why many critics and industry executives point to Napster as one of the pioneers of the digitalization of music.

If you haven’t kept up with the legal battles since the Napster filing, the RIAA has continued to get its hands dirty.  The group has sued about 35,000 people for pirating music since 2003. 

But just last week, the RIAA announced it would nix its policy of suing individual file sharers due to the legal costs exceeding the settlement money the practice brought in.

Call me a traditionalist, but I still carry my Discman with pride and I have not succumbed to buying an iPod. 

But I am clearly in the minority.  In 2007, U.S. album sales fell 9.5 percent, but digital music tracks soared for the first time past the 1 billion mark this year.

RICHARD SIMON, Multimedia Reporter

Inspired by a story about a guy with a fruitcake that allegedly was baked in 1911, the editor-in-chief at our sister paper, Minnesota Lawyer, went looking online for fruitcake lawsuits.

He found this one: An 80-something Delaware woman (who routinely would bake dozens a year for friends and family) sued the U.S. Postal Service for intentional and negligent infliction of emotional distress because, she said, a clerk at the Magnolia post office teased her about being a terrorist when she went to mail them. She was so humiliated that, eyes filled with tears, she tripped on the way out, broke her leg and chipped a tooth, court papers said.

The USPS won on all counts in 2006 after a bench trial, but plaintiff Lucille Greene soldiered on. According to the Associated Press:

Even though she has to go a post office farther from her home, Greene said she hasn’t given up on fruitcakes as Christmas gifts.

“My lawyer got a couple this year,” she said.

Just desserts?

BARBARA GRZINCIC, Managing Editor/Law

Most lawyers have had cause to withdraw from a case: an unruly client, a client who hasn’t paid his bill in months, or maybe even a late-breaking conflict of interest.

Fewer, though, have given the reason a pair of Covington & Burling partners gave U.S. District Judge Peter J. Messitte for why their co-counsel, Eric Holder, cannot continue to defend UBS Financial Services Inc. against a putative racial discrimination class action (now on appeal) brought by three black former employees.

“Mr. Holder has been nominated by President-Elect Barack Obama to serve as Attorney General in the new presidential administration,” they wrote in a short note to the presiding judge on Friday. “Therefore UBSFS requests leave of this Court to withdraw the appearance of Mr. Holder as counsel for UBSFS.”

I doubt Messitte, a Clinton appointee who purposefully scheduled his (semi)retirement for after President George W. Bush leaves office, will deny the motion. I also doubt the Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee will be as friendly an audience when Holder comes before them for his confirmation hearing early next year.

BRENDAN KEARNEY, Legal Affairs Writer

Maryland’s cap on non-economic damages has put a damper on personal injury awards for more than two decades now. Soon, the Court of Appeals will decide if the cap passes constitutional muster and whether it applies to lead-paint lawsuits brought under the state’s Consumer Protection Act.

Mary Joel Davis, founder and executive director of Alternative Directions Inc., will retire at the end of the year. Soon to be 75, she wants to focus on a few specific projects involving women inmates instead of managing the nonprofit’s day-to-day operations.

In the News:

* As interest rates fall, so does IOLTA — the source of funding for legal services. “We are bracing for very tough times ahead,” said Susan M. Erlichman, executive director of Maryland Legal Services Corp.

* An error in jury selection was so severe that the judge should have declared a mistrial without being asked, the Court of Appeals held. The decision gives Steven Anthony Powell the right to a new trial on four counts of sex offenses involving a 14-year-old girl.

* Anne K. Pecora, who founded what is now UB Law’s clinical program, died last week at age 62.

* Marta Harting leaves DLA Piper for Venable.

* Think all MICPEL books look pretty much the same? Think again. For Paul Mark Sandler’s “Anatomy of a Trial: A Primer for Young Lawyers,” MICPEL went with a decidedly slick look and a bicoastal marketing campaign.

In Verdicts & Settlements, a woman who was awarded $53,000 for a workplace assault has filed a motion for a new trial on the issue of damages. The defense considered the verdict a win, too; it had offered to settle for $250,000 in October.

Coming out of college, Michael P. Smith chose education over the law and he’s never regretted it. After four years as a math teacher in Baltimore, though, he was ready to make the switch.

In the latest installment of Judge on the Jury, Judge Dennis M. Sweeney talks about handling communications from the jury; in Of Service, Bob Rhudy and Joe Surkiewicz wonder who will fill the gap in legal services caused by HERO’s closure.

PLUS: Letters to the Editor; News Briefs; On the Move; and our Law Digest, this week with opinions by the Court of Special Appeals, the 4th Circuit and Maryland’s federal court.

BARBARA GRZINCIC, Managing Editor/Law