Articles Posted in Legal News

The New York Daily News reports that the family of a high school student in New York, who was killed in a stolen vehicle hit-and-run drunken driving accident, has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the driver of the car, the owner, and the family that hosted an underage drinking party.

It is an easy decision case against the adult hit-and-run drunk driver who also will face criminal liability. The merits of the case against both the owner of the vehicle and the family that hosted an underage drinking party where they gave the victim—not the driver—alcohol, is more problematic, even from a personal injury lawyer with an admittedly pro-plaintiff world view.

About half of the states have enacted Dram Shop statutes, which permitted the imposition of civil liability on suppliers of intoxicating beverages in certain circumstances. Only a few states take the position that there was no civil liability for serving alcohol.

But Maryland is one of those few states [Still, in 2013.]. Maryland courts will not distinguish a case where the alcohol was served to minors in the home with the parents’ consent (Maryland Court of Special Appeals opinion in Hebb v. Walker.

This is another bad and outdated Maryland law. Almost every state goes the other way on this. But this New York case is trickier than “the adults give kids alcohol, and then the kids go out and hurt someone in an accident” scenario. Both the pedestrian victim and the driver were drunk. The wrongful death lawsuit names the parents who allowed the pedestrian/victim to drink alcohol at a party.

Honestly, and the New York Daily News has a picture of this handsome boy and his parents that is downright heartbreaking, I have a hard time placing civil liability on the parents that allowed him to drink alcohol in their home. There are cases where someone is morally responsible—which I think is hard to deny in this case—but should not be civilly responsible.

I think this is one of them. A sixteen-year-old boy is blameless in the enormous picture in this case in every way that matters now. But his own behavior should—I think at least—negate the liability of the parents that allowed him the have alcohol. I realize this opinion is not out of the plaintiffs’ personal injury lawyer manifesto. But I didn’t check my own views at the door when I became a plaintiffs’ lawyer. Continue reading

U.S. News and World Report ranks the University of Baltimore Law School in the Fourth Tier again in its annual rankings of law schools. I incorrectly reported that UB was in the Third Tier yesterday. I must have been looking at last year’s results.

I was hoping to see the Law School jump to the second tier or remain in the third tier. But a new state-of-the-art building for the law school is coming and lots of other changes. I was telling my insurance law class at UB this morning that I can feel the quality of students dramatically improving. This means more to me than what U.S. News and World Report has to say, particularly with the recent building less than two years.

One thing you cannot help but notice in looking at the ranking of the school is that the University of Baltimore has a large law school. Contrast the University of Louisville’s 323 students with the University of Baltimore’s 657 full-time law students. This makes the competition a little unfair. If Louisville took 657 law students, the quality of its enrolled class would look very different. I think we would fare better if they only considered the top 300 students in the rankings.

Mega law firm McKenna Long & Aldridge announced yesterday it has cut the starting salaries of its first-year lawyers by $20,000. (The original version of this post said: “to $20,000.” Now that really would have been news!)

There has been a delay in reducing starting associate salaries even while these large firms are laying off scores of lawyers. Why? Well, let’s say you’re a muscle head who works out at the gym 7 days a week. Then disaster strikes. You get a job or, worse still, a family. Now you can only work out 4 days a week. What do you cut out of your workout? The bench press? No, how much you can bench is the muscle head signature statement of strength.

Starting associate salaries is like the bench press for major law firms. Bizarrely, you seem to lose more street cred firing lawyers and staff than you do lowering the salaries of your first-year lawyers. That’s my take on it anyway, which is, thankfully, from a distance.

I enjoy picking up the Outlook section of The Washington Post on Sunday’s to read George Will. I rarely agree with him. But I’m always impressed with his writing and analysis.

Sunday’s article offers thoughts on a topic that is obviously near and dear to my heart: litigation. George Will is less impressive when you know something about the topic he is writing about in his column. Continue reading

The Internet tells two stories this morning. First, the Maryland Daily Record tells the story of an applicant to the Maryland bar who has been practicing law, apparently without incident, in New York for 25 years. This New York lawyer apparently wanted to move to Maryland and took and passed the Maryland bar.

Six months before he passed the Maryland bar, this lawyer had received a DWI in Virginia. He did not disclose this during his character committee interview, which was less than two weeks after he had been released from a four-day stint in jail for the DWI. After he passed the bar, he fessed up. From the context of the story, I’m assuming that he came clean with no concern that they would uncover the arrest; he just belatedly did the right thing.

The second is a blog post from the New York Personal Injury Law Blog about a New York lawyer caught in a sting operation when “he engaged in sexually explicit conversations over an internet chat room with an undercover police officer posing as a 13-year-old girl, followed by his attempted meeting with the presumed minor for sexual contact.” But a divided New York court decided the sentence for this man would only be three years.

In the Maryland case, I would have admitted the lawyer if I were on the Maryland Court of Appeals. It seems to me, this was not a Marion Jones or even an Andy Pettitte situation where someone gets caught and suddenly claims remorse. Instead, it seems like this guy just plain did the wrong thing and then did the right thing.

Sure, he did not show, as Judge Lynne A. Battaglia pointed out writing for the majority, absolute candor. But while wrong can be black and white, it is still a matter of degree. How about admitting the guy—who apparently has been practicing law for a long time – and then suspending him for a year? For me personally, I’d be more inclined to deny his application for the DWI. He did not put my wife and kids at risk by omitting something and then correcting his error. But he did by getting drunk and getting behind the wheel of a car.

The New York sex offender case is baffling to me. How in the name of Chris Hansen is this guy permitted to continue to practice law? The dissent sums up my view:

Continue reading

The federal judges got their own financial bailout package. Congress has tucked a  judicial pay raise into the proposed $14 billion bailout for U.S. automakers. This pay raise puts judicial salaries on a par with members of Congress. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid apparently insisted that the judicial pay raise go into the automaker bailout package.

I’m fine with the raise. These judges are still underpaid even with this raise. But sticking these riders on major pieces of legislation? We are just going about making laws the wrong way, right? Isn’t this the stuff the Democrats said they would stop?

On Monday, the Maryland Court of Special Appeals decided Allen v. Marriott Worldwide Corporation, a Montgomery County slip and fall on ice case. The case sends a clear message to most ice slip and fall cases will not get to a jury. [2019 Update: The court walked back this law in 2011.]

This is just a slight step forward—the court eradicates a potential factual distinction between black ice in the naked eye and white ice. But after Morgan State University v. Walker, it is hard to expect a good slip and fall opinion from Maryland’s appellate courts absent compelling circumstance where the injury victim really had no choice – defined nearly literally – but to be where he or she was at the time of the fall.

Snow and Ice Slip and Fall Case