On the Record

I did not know The Pretenders had a song called “Brass in Pocket” until last week. Sure, I’d heard the song, where lead singer Chrissie Hynde vows to woo a gentleman using various body parts and inanimate objects. (I also remember the ’80s music video where Hynde plays a waitress.) 

But I learned the song title, naturally, from the latest opinion by Judge Glenn T. Harrell Jr. of the Court of Appeals. As my colleague Steve Lash reports in today’s paper, the case decided whether Harford County police unreasonably conducted a search-and-seizure of a car. Officers stopped the car in part because the driver, Garry Dennis Crosby Jr. was “slumped down” as he drove.

In his brief, Crosby said he was using a “Detroit Lean” while he was driving and pointed to a definition in Urban Dictionary: “driving with one hand on the wheel while slouched over to the right.”

Harrell, in a footnote, said an “independent endeavor to determine whether such a phenomenon exists” led to the Pretenders’ song, which he quoted:

Got motion, restrained emotion

I been driving, Detroit Leaning

No reason, just seems so pleasing

Gonna make you, make you, make you notice

“As the song predicts, Crosby’s ‘Detroit Leaning,’ if that is what he was doing, succeeded in getting him noticed,” Harrell concluded in his footnote.

Quick - what’s the first thing that comes to mind when you see this proposed license plate?

For those of you with your minds in the gutter, it was actually Kelley Coffman-Lee’s attempt to announce her fondness for tofu. But the proposed vanity license plate could be interpreted as her fondness for… um… something else, which led the Colorado Deparment of Revenue to deny Coffman’s request last month.

Now comes word the state actually keeps a list of unacceptable letter combinations under a law allowing authorities to ban potential license plates that are “offensive to good taste or decency.” The list currently has close to 3,000 entries.

This does not sit well with the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado, which obtained the list and believes authorities are unjustly censoring residents. The organization now has a section on its Web site devoted to vanity license plates and teases a “Vanity Plate Game” will soon be added.

Sounds gr8 to me.

Here’s a sentence from a press release issued by Baltimore County on Friday announcing that crime in the county was down in 2008 compared to 2007:

Most impressively, of the eight serious crime categories, seven have seen a decrease. Rape has decreased by 2 percent, robbery by 3.4 percent, aggravated assault by 10.7 percent, burglary by 9.8 percent, motor vehicle theft by 13.6 percent, and arson by 4.3 percent.

The release noted in an earlier paragraph homicide was down 16.7 percent, for those keeping count. But that still leaves one category that saw an increase and is not mentioned anywhere in the release.

According to police department data, that category is theft, which increased 5.7 percent between 2007 and 2008. Leading the surge is the theft of precious metals, specifically copper and catalytic converters, police spokesman Bill Toohey said. With copper, thieves typically enter homes under construction and take wiring; with catalytic converters, they swipe them right from cars. Catalytic converter thefts in the county, in fact, have increased from 50 in 2006 to 459 last year, Toohey said.

In both instances, the stolen goods are sold to scrap metal dealers, said Toohey. The Maryland Senate passed a bill last month that would require junk dealers and scrap metal processors to keep more detailed records of who they are buying goods from to help police catch the theives, but the companion bill in the House of Delegates did not make it out of committee.

Click here for the county’s crime summary. Overall, crime decreased 1.2 percent in 2008 compared to 2007.

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.

There’s no doubt that times are tough for American auto dealers.

Nevertheless, GM is moving forward (and generating some buzz) with Stolen Vehicle Slowdown - their new OnStar technology.

It basically works like this: When a GM car is stolen, the victim calls OnStar for assistance. OnStar reps then use real-time GPS technology to locate the stolen vehicle and report it to law enforcement. Once the vehicle is found by police, they request OnStar slow down the stolen vehicle remotely by reducing engine power.

OnStar had representatives at the Laurel Park Race Track yesterday and allowed reporters to get a sneak peak of the technology inside a “stolen” Chevy Tahoe.

As you will see in the video below, we were not on the actual racetrack; we were in the parking lot outside. Still, I marveled at how quickly OnStar was able to remotely slow the vehicle we were driving.

See for yourself and watch the video below.

RICHARD SIMON, Multimedia Reporter

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In case you missed it, Hagerty Insurance Agency (a Michigan vintage automotive insurance company) released the results of a survey highlighting the top 10 most “questionable” car designs.

Its customers were apparently none too fond of the now-defunct AMC stable of vehicles, which had three vehicles on the list.