• Everything was closed this weekend, but the LSAT at Georgetown went on.
• Establish a health court to hear med mal claims and let docs make real apologies to their patients when they mess up, suggests The Sun’s Second Opinion.
• Citizens United could define the Roberts Supreme Court. HT: How Appealing.
• You’ve seen Carly Fiorina’s “demon sheep” ad, but have you seen the “Dr. Frankenstein” ad in the coroner’s race in Orleans Parish, Louisiana?
• Lying about being a military hero makes you a class-A jerk, but should it be a crime?

(”BDSM”, as the story notes, stands for “bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, sadism and masochism.” If you want to find out more, I suggest using your home computer, not your work one.)

The story is about how one of the home’s renters received a written warning from Montgomery County zoning officials because he has been charging admission to the parties, commercial activity largely prohibited in residential areas.

The zoning issue alone would have been enough for me to blog about this story. But then there’s this gem of a quote about the type of people who attend the parties:

“An amazing cross-section of humanity,” says Susan Wright, founder of the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom. “Men, women, transgender, heterosexuals, gays, bisexuals. Every ethnicity. White-collar and blue-collar. It’s really very, very diverse — though we do have an unusually high percentage of lawyers. I don’t know why.”

Sounds like I have a story to work on after I dig out of the snow.

According to the Chicago Tribune, the Illinois court was not bothered by the fact that other states have supported a cap. “That ‘everybody is doing it,’ is hardly a litmus test for the constitutionality of the statute,” the justices wrote.

There you have it: two states, similar issues, very different results.

That begs the question: What are the other two lawsuits? Glad you asked. The first one, filed in April 2008, came from a prisoner in Cumberland seeking to waive a filing fee prepayment, a request that was promptly denied.

The other one, filed last May, remains open and could have widespread ramifications. An Arbutus distributor of gaming devices has asked a judge to declare pull tab gaming machines legal in Baltimore County.  Acme Amusements argues the machines are not slots in part because the element of chance comes from the pull tabs, not the machine containing them.

“The machines at issue in this case do not read the pull tabs or any tickets electronically, do not alert the user to a winning or losing ticket and do not tabulate a player’s winnings or losses,” the company states. “As such, they fall outside the definition of ’slot machines’ and are not illegal devices.”

The company cites the Court of Appeals’ Chesapeake Amusement decision in 2001 to explain why it proceeded with its declaratory judgment action. The defendant in that underlying case was the Calvert County State’s Attorney.

Tim Maloney, Acme’s lawyer, said he expects lawyers from the Office of the Attorney General to argue the case during a hearing scheduled for April.

• Jim Gross and Heather Sunderman both post on Del. Luiz Simmons’ proposal to let couples file for divorce if they’ve gone a year without sex. At present, those contemplating divorce must first live apart for a year. Gross writes: “The purpose of this waiting period is to favor marriage over divorce and make sure the parties really, really want to be divorced and not married.  After all, sometimes people change their minds.  But the recession has forced many couples to live together in misery because they cannot afford to separate.” Sunderman writes: “I think this proposal strikes a good balance between the state’s interest in promoting marriage, but allowing people to start the process without facing financial disaster.”
• Abolish the Local Government Tort Claims Act, writes Ron Miller. “What exactly is the wisdom in treating government different from you and I when it comes to the statute of limitations?”
• “Birther” Orly Taitz wants to run for California Attorney General.
• Oooh, fun! Cracked lists five creepy criminal defense lawyer Web sites. (Warning: irreverence ahead.) HT: Above the Law.
• Justice Ginsburg may have snoozed at the State of the Union because the justices met for dinner and drinks first.

For the uninitiated, the show followed eight twentysomethings for a month last summer as they lived and worked together on the beach in Seaside Heights, N.J. The Situation, Snooki, battling beats, GTL… the show has captured the cultural Zeitgeist with a pound of hair gel to spare.

Now comes word that one of the show’s stars has taken the LSAT. Vinny Guadagnino, known as simply “Vinny“, said he got a “mediocre” score on the test, which shot his plan of doing really well and enrolling at Yale or Harvard.

Vinny said he would like to practice business or corporate law one day. But right now, he is putting any law dreams he has on hold to ride out his newfound stardom.

“To tell you the truth, man, [being a] lawyer isn’t something I wanted to do,” he said.  “Nobody wants to be a lawyer — it’s hard work. But it was kind of my academic route.”

No matter where Vinny ends up, “Jersey Shore” fans know one thing - Vinny’s mom will love him.

Back in November, I got pulled over and cited for “failure to maintain and fasten vehicle registration plate in visible position,” a violation of Transportation Article 13-411. No, I wasn’t driving without a license plate. Rather, my plate had a thick clear plastic cover on it, which the officer told me was illegal in Maryland. We’d bought the cover years ago in Pennsylvania after idiots/thieves/take your pick twice (!) tore off half our plate.

Anyway, I looked up the definition of a registration plate cover under Maryland law, and here’s what I found:

(a) In this section, “registration plate cover” means any tinted, colored, painted, marked, clear, or illuminated object that is designed to:

(1) Cover any of the characters of a vehicle’s registration plate; or

(2) Distort a recorded image of any of the characters of a vehicle’s registration plate recorded by a traffic control signal monitoring article…

This morning, I headed to district court to fight the ticket. It was only a $60 fine, and going to court was an inconvenience, but I was convinced that the ticket was a mistake.

I waited my turn as dozens of other alleged traffic offenders came before the judge, mostly to plead guilty or guilty with an explanation. (Note to the dude who was clocked going 109: I’m thinking there’s no really good explanation for that one.) When my turn came, I pleaded not guilty and then waited until the end of the docket for my trial.

The officer told the judge that my car had a dark, tinted plate cover on it and that he had stopped me and written a citation. I countered that the cover was clear. I told the judge that the intent of the statute seemed to be to prohibit covers that would prevent someone from reading the plate, but that the officer had clearly had no problem reading mine, and those that would interfere with something like a red light camera. Mine doesn’t, as evidenced by the EZ-Pass violation notice I brought to show the judge. If EZ-Pass could read the plate well enough to send us a notice, surely a red light camera could, too. I explained why we had bought the cover; it wasn’t to obscure our plate, but to thwart thieves. We’d bought it in Pennsylvania, not here in Maryland, where the sale of such items is banned. Finally, I mentioned that in the years since we’ve lived in Maryland, no one who’s serviced our car has ever brought up the license plate cover law.

Well, I was either really annoying or really convincing, because the judge agreed with me. My first (and only, I hope) encounter with the traffic court system ended in a not guilty verdict.

I have nothing but praise for the judge, and not just because she did what I requested. As I sat there this morning, I heard my fellow defendants make every kind of excuse for their driving infractions. The judge must hear such things day after day, and it has to get old, yet she treated everyone who came before her with respect, even when condemning their driving behavior. I might not be so patient.

Oh, and the offending license plate cover? I unscrewed the thing and took it off the day after my ticket. I may have been in the right, but who needs the hassle? If anyone tears my plate in half again, though, all bets are off.

Take a look at Judge J. Frederick Motz’s 10:30 a.m. engagement.

That’s right, a bank fraud and identity theft defendant named Brotha Workitout is finally pleading guilty (to a misdemeanor related to using fraudulent identification documents).

“That is actually his name,” confirmed Assistant Federal Public Defender Brendan A. Hurson, who is representing Workitout. “He had some mental health issues and he changed his name.”

Workitout, whose given name is James Weldon Hunter Jr., has been receiving treatment  since around the time of his not-guilty plea three years ago, and his deal with the government envisions more of the same.

“Things are better,” Hurson said, noting Workitout hasn’t had “a single brush with the law” since his indictment in 2006 . “But unfortunately the name remains.”

It is unclear what name Workitout, who is also identified in court papers as Hesman Wisteria Tall, will go by during his probation, but regardless, I’m glad to hear it’s all … working out.

To be sure, clearing Death Row wouldn’t achieve his ultimate goal of abolishing the death penalty. But it would save the lives of five people sentenced under what the Commission on Capital Punishment has told the governor was an irretrievably flawed process — and whose executions, according to O’Malley, would serve no purpose even if that process had been absolutely pristine.

So Lane asked O’Malley about it, and O’Malley was not, in his judgment, able to muster a convincing answer as to why he can’t or won’t commute the sentences. Lane concludes that it’s a political decision:

I suppose O’Malley’s re-election might be so important to the long-run cause of abolishing the death penalty in Maryland that it is worth exposing five actual condemned men to prolonged uncertainty, not to mention the risk of possible execution, in the here and now. But I’d sure like to see someone try to argue that publicly.

A White Marsh couple’s lawsuit seeking to recover money seized by police in a drug raid is headed back to district court to determine if the county should be afforded a new trial.

The county’s request previously had been denied, leading to a circuit court appeal heard in October.

Judge Lawrence R. Daniels, in a mid-December ruling docketed earlier this month, remanded the new trial question because the denial was issued as a chambers ruling.

“[W]ithout knowledge of the reasons for the trial court’s decision, we cannot say, with certainty, that the trial court ‘fairly’ exercised its discretion,” Daniels wrote, referring to guidelines for granting a new trial motion set out in a 1988 Court of Special Appeals case.

The case will be heard Feb. 23 in Baltimore County District Court in Catonsville, according to court records.

Police raided the home of Rogelio and Rosario Simon in February 2006 using a warrant and found 67 guns and small amounts of marijuana, methamphetamine and prescription medication in addition to the money. But only a few guns and the drugs were connected to Marlon Simon, the couple’s grown son and the one under investigation on federal drug charges.

Rogelio and Rosario Simon sued the county in November 2007, seeking to recover his guns and her money. The county claims it no longer has the firearms or the money, having turned everything over to the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. But no one from the county appeared at the January 2008 district court trial in the case, leading to a $13,063 default judgment for Rosario Simon. Vinson said during the circuit court hearing that an error in the county’s mail system led to the district court absence.

Daniels, during the October hearing, took the county to task for failing to appear in district court. In his ruling, the judge also notes the county only hinted at its legal arguments with a boilerplate, “bald assertion” in its motion for a new trial.

But Daniels ultimately decided the county could have mounted a “meritorious defense” in district court to the Simons’ lawsuit and was therefore denied a “substantial right” by the lower court’s ruling.

“[T]he most fundamental right of a party against whom suit has been brought is the right to present a meritorious defense,” Daniels wrote.

The firearm lawsuit was dismissed when MacVaugh learned the county no longer had Rogelio Simon’s antique and modern weapons, which were returned to Simon in the fall.

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