On the Record

ON THE COVER: Life after Law — You’ve earned your J.D., passed the bar and taken the oath. But now you realize you no longer want to practice law. Caryn Tamber spotlights lawyers who have chosen alternative careers.

A consumer, saying the Gateway computer he bought at Best Buy is defective,  challenges the arbitration clause in the manufacturer’s warranty — and wins in the Court of Special Appeals. Find out how in Danny Jacobs’ report on Barrington D. Henry v. Gateway Inc., et al.

In Breaking News, former Nigerian presidential candidate Godson M. Nnaka, a Baltimore lawyer, runs afoul of the Attorney Grievance Commission — but is nowhere to be found; and the Maryland Comptroller owes Lenox Inc. a refund of more than $280,000 on taxes the china company paid on a product-handling system at its Hagerstown facility.

Upper Marlboro lawyer Rick Jaklitsch presides over the Terrapin Club, the University of Maryland’s booster group that raises money and provides scholarships for the more than 700 student-athletes on the 27 varsity teams at College Park.

In Verdicts & Settlements, a toymaker settles with its founder’s Hunt Valley consulting company over fees and royalties.

Guest columnist Linda D. Schwartz provides advice on what to do upon receiving a letter from Bar Counsel.

Stay up-to-date with our Law Digest, which includes cases from the Maryland Court of Appeals and the U.S. District Court, Maryland.

ON THE COVER: Top court returns — The Court of Appeals begins its September 2009 term this week. The high court will hear cases addressing the cap on non-economic damages, legal malpractice and whether a truck driver can be guilty of vehicular manslaughter for leaving the scene of a gravel spill from his truck.

Also on the Court of Appeals — the judges recall their summer break; columnist Chris Brown ranks last year’s votes; and plaintiffs’ lawyers Henry E. Dugan Jr. and George S. Tolley III explain the importance of last term’s landmark informed-consent decision.

In Breaking News, Baltimore City Councilwoman Helen L. Holton fights new charges; an immigration lawyer is disbarred after pleading guilty to fraud; and an attorney owes fees for having filed suit without sufficient justification.

In Verdicts & Settlements, a motorcyclist receives $200,000 in damages after colliding with a hand truck that fell from a passing box truck.

U.S. District Magisitrate Judge Charles B. Day of Greenbelt has no plans to take it easy after stepping down from the Federal Magistrate Judges Association after a decade in senior posts at the group.

Stay up-to-date with our Law Digest, which includes cases from the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals and the U.S. District Court, Maryland.

A prosecutor’s ethical duty to disclose information to the defense exceeds his or her constitutional duty, according to a new ABA Ethics Opinion. So — if the Supreme Court rejects your Brady challenge, take heart: there’s always Bar Counsel.

On the Cover: Right on the Money – Murder. Larceny. Can this really be a civil insurance case?

Also, a 2-1 panel of the 4th Circuit upholds the federal sex offender registration law and a regulation that makes it apply retroactively.

In Breaking News, a retired Rockville lawyer escapes disbarment by a single vote on the Court of Appeals, and Baltimore County Circuit Judge Lawrence R. Daniels says he will not run for re-election.

Read about a settlement between a Baltimore dry cleaner and a Lutherville couple who claim the store ruined their wedding attire, in Verdicts & Settlements.

In this week’s Pro Bono, real-estate lawyer Sophie Dagenais discusses her effort to get arabbers — horse-and-cart produce vendors — a new headquarters.

Joe Surkiewicz explains why IOLTA doesn’t work, in his Of Service column.

Stay up to date with our Legal Briefs and Case Digest, with cases from the Maryland Court of Appeals, Maryland Court of Special Appeals and the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

We’re already getting mixed reactions to this story about Michael U. Gisriel’s disbarment. On the one hand, you can’t go around signing your clients’ names and cashing checks made out to them without their permission – even if the check is only for $1,000 and you have your reasons for believing the money is actually meant for you. On the other hand, after three decades of an unblemished career, should you lose your license over a thousand-dollar mistake that’s since been rectified?

And, given the Court of Appeals‘ use of the term “hubris” to describe Gisriel’s actions, does it matter if that career has been a relatively high-profile one, including stints as a lobbyist, state delegate and media commentator?  

What do you think?

What effect will the Supreme Court’s ruling on drug-label warnings, Wyeth v. Levine, have in the state’s trial courts? While it will undoubtedly move cases forward, lawyers in Maryland don’t expect a flood of new litigation. As one noted, “There hasn’t been this huge holding back” by trial lawyers here.

MICPEL, already struggling with the economy, faces a new hurdle: replacing its longtime executive director, Brent Burry, who will return to his native South Carolina next month.

In other news:

• Med-mal defense litigators at Whiteford, Taylor & Preston will be leaving for Hodes, Pessin & Katz in the coming weeks;
• The top court dismissed Bar Counsel’s action against a Tydings partner who billed the firm for the fair market value of flights he purchased with frequent-flier miles;
• Bankruptcy lawyers continue to switch firms — and some have formed a new Annapolis boutique firm;
• Investors suing golf-course developer Neal Trabich haled both him and his former attorney into court in a discovery dispute. (The judge found no fault with the “experienced, highly talented and widely respected” Andrew Radding, but withheld judgment on Trabich); and
• The new U.S. Attorney General, Eric H. Holder Jr., was in Baltimore on Friday to address the National District Attorneys Association’s board of directors.

In Verdicts and Settlements, a former tenant was awarded $10,000 in attorneys’ fees for defending against retaliatory back-rent suits by her landlord. (Also, see this story about the settlement of a suit between rival car dealerships.)

Three years out of school, Alicia N. Ritchie may be a young lawyer, but she’s already an old hand at pro bono representation.

In Opinion/Commentary, Our Editorial Advisory Board looks at the shadow banking industry, while DLA Piper’s Jack Machen outlines what’s right and what’s wrong with Baltimore’s green-building ordinance.

PLUS: On the Move, Briefs/Week in Review and our weekly Law Digest of cases from the Maryland appellate courts and the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

With declining markets and law-firm layoffs in the news, soon-to-be lawyers are wondering about their own job prospects, Caryn Tamber writes. Prospects are looking up, though, for two civil servants who were fired after campaigning for their newly elected boss’s opponent. The Court of Appeals said the workers should not have been booted out of court on summary judgment motions.

In other news:

• The top court reprimanded a long-time lawyer who was “up to the elbows” in work when he received an inquiry from Bar Counsel;
• An engagement letter with one lawyer capped the fees the firm could later charge for work by any of its lawyers;
• A jury rejected claims of abuse at a centuries-old treatment center for disturbed children, but awarded the plaintiff $239,000 for his broken hip from a slip-and-fall;
• The Court of Appeals considered whether a defendant was denied his right to an attorney of his choice when the lawyer he thought he had hired sent his law partner to represent him at trial; and
• Stevenson University’s new mock-trial courtroom made its debut with more bells and whistles than many real courtrooms enjoy.

In Verdicts and Settlements, a jury awarded $300,000 to an Essex woman who was the victim of a botched carpal tunnel syndrome release surgery in September 2004. And in Profiles in Leadership, Brendan Kearney checks in with Stephen J. Nolan, now serving a one-year term as chairman of the American Lung Association.

Read Jim Astrachan’s Legal ADvice column (print only),  Of Service by Joe Surkiewicz; Judge on the Jury by Judge Dennis M. Sweeney, and a letter to the editor.

PLUS — News briefs, On the move, and our Law Digest, this week with 15 cases from the Maryland Court of Appeals and Special Appeals, the Supreme Court and 4th Circuit, and the U.S. District Court.

When the Court of Appeals suspended (PDF) lemon-law attorneys Craig Kimmel and Robert Silverman last week, the big question was whether the Maryland office of their firm, Kimmel & Silverman, could operate during their suspension. Kimmel and Silverman, whose firm is based in Pennsylvania, are each admitted to practice in three states, but neither is admitted in Maryland. Their office here, in Baltimore County, has been staffed by Maryland lawyers working under the Kimmel & Silverman name.

The suspension won’t go into effect for several weeks, and 90 days after it does, Kimmel and Silverman will have the right to reapply.

I called Bar Counsel Mel Hirshman yesterday (he was out of the office last week and unavailable to talk) and asked him if Kimmel & Silverman could keep its Maryland office during the suspension.

“I don’t think so,” he said. “Not, at least, under that name.”

I’ve asked a spokesman for the firm for his comment. I’ll provide an update, either by blog or story, on what happens next.

CARYN TAMBER, Legal Affairs Writer

Information on federal judicial misconduct sanctions will soon be as close as your computer, according to our sister blog, DC Dicta.

Under new rules approved this week by the U.S. Judicial Conference, sanctions will be posted online and will identify the federal judge involved by name.

Information about complaints that are dismissed will remain confidential, but the new rules (PDF) allow the USJC’s Committee on Judicial Conduct and Disability to review such dismissals to determine whether special investigating committees should be appointed.

The rules come in response to a 2006 report by a special committee chaired by Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer that identified problems with some judges’ handling of high-profile complaints against their colleagues, DC Dicta says.

Breyer praised the new rules in a statement, calling their implementation “a very good thing” for the federal courts and those who use them.

Now, you might think Maryland must be way ahead of the feds on this point. After all, the Web site for the state’s Attorney Grievance Commission prominently posts the names and offenses of sanctioned lawyers, with big, boldly marked links for 2006, 2007 and this year’s ongoing count.

But does the Maryland Commission on Judicial Disabilities follows suit for sanctioned state judges? No; at least, not anywhere that I could find online.

True, people choose their lawyers, not their judges. But why have two different standards for online disclosure?

BARBARA GRZINCIC, Managing Editor/Law

UPDATE: Gary J. Kolb, executive director of the Maryland Commission on Judicial Disabilities, says a new Web site is in the works, pending the commission’s vote on March 24. “I’ve been pushing for this for a long time,” Kolb says. If approved, the new site will be “more accessible and more useful” than the current one-page fact sheet, with a downloadable complaint form, a Q&A section, a copy of the ethics rules and annual reports with statistics on claims handled by the commission, among other information. Will it include public sanctions for individual judges, though? “Not this first version,” Kolb says, but he’s working on it.

The University of Maryland’s Capital News Service has a couple of interesting stories on what we here like to call “Lawyers Behaving Badly,” a.k.a. Attorney Grievance Commission actions. (Come on, you know you like this stuff. Attorney malfeasance stories are consistently among the most read on our Web site.)

Writer Anju Kaur looked at discipline records and found that the number of attorney reprimands issued since private sanctions were banned does not equal the number issued back when they could be kept private. Kaur also looked at what sorts of behavior can get you disbarred in Maryland. (Hint: microwaving your divorce client’s estranged wife’s cat won’t do it.)

Ever see an AGC case where you think the Court of Appeals made a mistake in determining the sanction? Do you think more lawyers ought to be disciplined? Or is the AGC already bringing charges against too many?

CARYN TAMBER, Legal Affairs Writer