On the Record

As the clock wound down in the countdown to NFL free agency late Thursday afternoon, Ray Lewis’ agent Ira Rainess told a group of law students his client’s ties to Baltimore went deeper than a football contract.

A partner with Rainess in Team 52 Development LLC, Lewis is an equity partner in the city’s Gateway South, a mixed-use sports, retail and office space project that will include an educational and mentoring center named for Lewis.

After Lewis avoided a charge for attempted murder in 2000, Rainess said the linebacker came to him to work on how to get active in the community and teach kids how to not go down the wrong path.

“I meet with the city every one or two weeks to talk about issues in Baltimore where they need his help,” Rainess said at a sports law symposium hosted by the University of Baltimore School of Law, his alma mater. “Ray makes his home here; his commitment to the city is as good as any athlete I’ve ever seen.”

Rainess also told students he believed that public/private development projects such as Gateway South are the wave of the future for athletes Read the rest of this entry »

Los Angeles has started an experiment aimed at curbing prostitution.

It’s sending men who get caught soliciting sex to “john school.” If the men submit to an HIV test, shell out $600 for the one-day class and do not have certain types of prior arrests, they won’t have to do the usual 15-day jail sentence that goes with the crime. If they don’t get caught again within a year, their file is closed. If they do, they get a longer sentence.

The program, as the Times’ headline implies, hopes to turn the johns away from soliciting sex by using fear and shame.

Police officers show them photos of bruised and battered johns who made a deal with a prostitute, only to find that they had been set up to be robbed. They hear (and, probably more importantly, see) the details on various sexually-transmitted diseases. The johns also hear from former prostitutes, who tell them that, despite what they may want to believe, hookers do not enjoy their jobs.

This sort of program is used in other cities, but not Baltimore, as far as I can tell. From this Examiner story, though, it looks like it is on prosecutors’ radar. I am trying to get in touch with someone who can tell me whether any further steps have been made in establishing the program here, and I’ll update this post if I hear back.

This old post from the blog Feministing does raise an interesting question about the concept: Is it fair for prostitutes to go to jail when their customers avoid it?

Thanks to WSJ Law Blog for pointing the way to this story.

CARYN TAMBER, Legal Affairs Writer

I don’t think James F. Sanders and Stephen L. Snyder will be exchanging holiday cards any time soon.

To be sure, the lead counsels for ExxonMobil Corp. and Jacksonville residents, respectively, have maintained a professional relationship during the five-month trial stemming from a 25,000-gallon gasoline leak in early 2006. And I have seen them exchange the occasional laugh in the courtroom during breaks.

But after butting heads so many times since October, you get the sense they’d be happy not to see one another again once the case ends.

(It should be noted the same could be said of all of the lawyers on both sides of the case, as witnessed by a courtroom scuffle that nearly erupted last month.)

I was reminded of this as Sanders began his closing argument today. Snyder, during his time before the jury, frequently called Exxon’s behavior shameful and wondered aloud how Sanders would explain certain issues the plaintiffs raised.

Sanders began his closing by laying down some ground rules — he would not answer every inaccuracy or claim unsupported by evidence raised by Snyder.

“All that does is aggravate the confusion he has so skillfully created,” he said.

Sanders then had this to say about Snyder:

“He’s an absolute handful. You’ve got to love him. But I don’t agree with how he has mangled the facts. In my wildest imagination, I would’ve never come up with some of the theories or stating of facts he has come up with. It’s brilliant. It’s wrong, but it’s brilliant.”

I’m still not sure whether that is a compliment, backhanded compliment or a little of both.

DANNY JACOBS, Legal Affairs Writer

Virginia Lawyers Weekly, a sister publication of The Daily Record, had this blog post today on federal court endorsements by the Virginia Bar Association and the Virginia Trial Lawyers Association.

Both groups recommended Del. John S. Edwards and Virginia Supreme Court Justice Barbara Milano Keenan for a vacancy on the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and U.S. Magistrate Judge M. Hannah Lauck for a judgeship in the Eastern District of Virginia.

Beyond that, they differ substantially on other candidates. Click here to get the full story.

Mother Jones magazine has a fascinating article in its March/April issue about people who open franchise businesses, then find out that the franchisor has not been entirely up front with them. The story focuses on an Annapolis couple, Deborah Williams and Richard Welshans, who opened a Coffee Beanery in 2003.

According to the story:

The couple hadn’t fully appreciated that Coffee Beanery, like many franchise operators, makes money selling franchises and gear, not coffee. They started getting bills far in excess of what they believed they’d signed up for. There was surveillance equipment, a music system, an obsolete, $14,000 lighting system. The ice machine the company sent was big enough to supply several restaurants, Williams says. Then there was the faulty $8,000 pastry display case, and a cash register so buggy that it sometimes forced them to close for days. In Coffee Beanery’s initial documentation, Welshans and Williams allege, it also failed to disclose a gift-card program and a Pepsi contract that were later imposed. If the couple refused any of it, the company could sue them for franchise violation. “We were losing money hand over fist,” Williams recalls.

The couple was financially ruined.

When they sued Coffee Beanery in federal district court in Maryland, the company got the case moved to Michigan, where it is based. There, a judge looked at the “fine print” of their franchise contract, which committed the franchisees to settle disputes by arbitration, and sent the case to an arbitrator.

The arbitrator found for Coffee Beanery, attributing the couple’s problems with their store to their own inexperience, and ordered them to pay more Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been immersed in the Jacksonville residents’ billion-dollar lawsuit against ExxonMobil Corp. most of the past two weeks, so I haven’t been able to spend much time observing another high-profile case happening down the hall in Baltimore County Circuit Court.

That’s where John and Susan Griffin are facing first-degree murder charges in the starvation death of their 2-year-old son, Andrew. Andrew Griffin weighed only 13 pounds when he was pronounced dead at St. Joseph Medical Center in December 2007.

When I do get a chance to pop into the trial, what strikes me first is the mood. The courtroom feels somber, quite appropriate given the nature of the case. The legal theatrics and audience rumblings in the Exxon case are nowhere to be seen. Where the Exxon trial sometimes feels like a community association meeting, the Griffins’ trial feels more funereal.

John Griffin took the witness stand Tuesday in his own defense. Griffin’s lawyer, Joseph Murtha, was showing Griffin various photographs of Andrew during the portion of testimony I observed. The first photo was from November 2006, when Andrew was 18 months old.

“Andrew’s stature was on the small side, but despite the smallness he was appropriately developing,” John Griffin said, comparing him to his older brother at the same age.

John Griffin said no health issues out of the ordinary were brought to his attention by his wife. He was then shown pictures of Andrew in early 2007 and then during the summer, six months before his death. John Griffin reiterated his earlier statement about Andrew’s health.

“He does look a little thinner, but there was no concern expressed to me related to that,” he said.
Closing arguments in the bench trial before Judge Timothy J. Martin could begin as early as Wednesday.

DANNY JACOBS, Legal Affairs Writer

The Project for Attorney Retention has a new report (PDF) out showing that of the new partners named by 100 big law firms in 2009, only 28 percent are women. That’s down from 31 percent last year.

Of the firms with a significant Maryland presence, Venable had the lowest percentage of new female partners this year — zero. That earned it a spot on PAR’s list of “the worst.”

DLA Piper makes the “not much better” list. Of the firm’s 13 partner promotions, two were women. That’s 15 percent.

Hogan & Hartson made PAR’s list of “the best,” with half of its six new partners being women.

McGuireWoods was at three of 15, or 20 percent.

The report points out that the firms with the highest percentages of new female partners have performed consistently well in past years. Some of the firms that had low percentages this year, though, have done well in other years.

Venable, for instance, reached 44 percent last year. DLA Piper hit 54 percent.

Cynthia Calvert of PAR said that, prior to this year, firms had been steadily making progress on naming women partners.

In addition to showing a small drop in percentage of new female partners, PAR’s numbers show a large drop in overall number of new partners. Last year, the firms made 1,093 new partners. This year, they made 848, a 22 percent drop.

HT: BLT.

CARYN TAMBER, Legal Affairs Writer

Tony Dix, Baltimore City Circuit Court Clerk Frank M. Conaway Sr.’s right-hand man who was arrested last August for allegedly forging painkiller prescriptions, was scheduled to stand trial this morning in Towson.

But the disposition of the four criminal counts against Dix will have to wait until June because his lawyer, Joseph Murtha, couldn’t make it to Baltimore County District Court this morning: Murtha’s still busy a few blocks away defending John Griffin, who stands charged with starving his toddler to death.

Judge Jan M. Alexander conceded Dix was entitled to the lawyer of his choosing, agreed to postpone the case and moved on to the next defendant on his docket.

Approached as he left the Chesapeake Avenue courthouse, Dix, 52, declined to comment on his case.

BRENDAN KEARNEY, Legal Affairs Writer

Baltimore City Circuit Court workers have complained for years about their working conditions: dark particulate dust or soot accreting around air vents and falling onto their desks, mold that has led to respiratory problems, inadequate security protocols and, among other issues, vermin.

But it sounds like employees of the Palm Beach County Courthouse might have it worse — at least in the mouse category.

According to this story in the Palm Beach Post last week, the rodent situation in that South Florida house of justice has gotten downright biblical. One prosecutor has even named her little furry officemate “Moses.” Maybe in hopes that he’ll call off the plague?

Arthur “Pat” Kelly, a clerk in the Baltimore court’s civil division and the president of American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 3674, smiled knowingly when she saw the article.

“The only thing is they don’t leak from the ceiling here,” she said. “But I’ve seen a little family crawling around the ledge in a courtroom in the [Clarence M. Mitchell Jr. Courthouse] building.”
As for checking her handbag for unwanted passengers before leaving each afternoon?

“That’s what we do every day here,” the union boss said.

BRENDAN KEARNEY, Legal Affairs Writer

Back in January, the day before the Baltimore Ravens beat the Tennessee Titans in a playoff game, jurors in the Jacksonville residents’ billion-dollar lawsuit against ExxonMobil Corp. wore Ravens’ paraphernalia. Many of the plaintiffs’ lawyers from Snyder, Weltchek & Snyder wore purple ties or had purple beads around their necks. (Lawyers for Exxon, it should be noted, might not have shown their Ravens’ leanings out of respect for the company’s lead counsel, who are based in Nashville.)

The last person to enter the courtroom that day was the plaintiffs’ lead counsel, Stephen L. Snyder. And when he took off his overcoat, he was wearing a purple suit, much to the delight of everyone in the courtroom.

I mention perhaps my favorite anecdote from the five-month trial to illustrate that most of the light-hearted moments have involved — or were directly caused by — Snyder throughout the proceedings. This Monday was no exception, as Snyder provided a few laughs during the start of his closing argument.

— The always nattily-attired Snyder thanked the jurors for sitting on a trial that has lasted longer than everyone expected. “I almost ran out of suits,” he deadpanned.

— Snyder was in the middle of a point when he was interrupted by his co-counsel, Robert J. Weltchek, who made a correction. Snyder thanked Weltchek and smiled. “One more time and I’ll throw you out of here,” Snyder said.

— A comic strip-like cartoon, part of the plaintiffs’ PowerPoint presentation, illustrated Exxon’s unresponsiveness to an actual leak alarm from a leak detection system because the detector often went off for reasons other than a leak. It featured a boy holding a bucket filled with water. Snyder said the boy’s name was “Peter.”

This touched off murmurs about mixing up children’s stories. The main character in the fable “The Boy Who Cried Wolf”, it was later determined, is not necessarily the same character as in the early 20th century musical composition “Peter and The Wolf.” Snyder held his ground.

“Well, I call him ‘Peter,’” he said.

DANNY JACOBS, Legal Affairs Writer