Baltimore - the little city that couldn't? Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

Mayor O'Malley of Baltimore has fired his Police Commissioner Kevin Clark due to "distractions" surrounding an allegation of domestic violence by Clark earlier this year. This firing marks one of a long list of embarrassments for the City of Baltimore. One gets the idea that there are no decent police administrators anywhere who could get the job. Clark's predecessor Ed Norris pled guilty to financial crimes several months ago and was sentenced to federal prison. We don't have to have a genius in this office, but a non-criminal would be a welcome change. But no one in Baltimore is surprised that the little city that couldn't once again, well, couldn't.



Baltimore is a decaying, dying city, notwithstanding recent gentrification near Fells Point and Canton. Not only is the police department a national embarrassment, but the City school system is under federal court supervision comparable to chapter 11 bankruptcy due to massive financial irregularities, among other huge problems.



The city's public transportation system is an antiquated, poorly designed slow boat farce compared to those of similarly sized cities such as Cleveland, Portland and even smaller cities like Salt Lake City and Sacramento. The traffic in the suburbs is getting more and more horrendous as every City resident who can get to the County does so. Meanwhile, vacant houses stand amidst decaying neighborhoods. Suburbanites are choosing suburban traffic over urban decay. The City once had nearly 1,000,000 residents in the 1950's; the city has kept building houses and apartment complexes, public and private, but now has only about 640,000 residents. Many of the city's houses are assessed below 25,000 in value. Do the math.



The city is estimated to have as many as 60,000 drug addicts. Note the population numbers above; do the math.



Meanwhile, the city's property taxes - both business and residential - are over twice those of neighboring Baltimore County. Even many law firms - always wanting to be near the courthouse - have nonetheless surrendered and fled to the County.



The city has enormous rates of syphillis, gonorrhea, teenage pregnancy and children without present fathers - in the same league with historically dead cities like Detroit, New Orleans and Newark, NJ.



I am not per se religious, but I am beginning to think that Baltimore City is indeed the land that God gave Cain. Yet I love this city anyway, go figure....

The Marlboro Fire Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

For those who have not heard it yet, the courthouse in Upper Marlboro caught fire on November 3rd. The north wing of the building had been undergoing renovations for many months and was to reopen in January. Moderately high winds and an abundance of construction materials added to the power of the fire. Fortunately, no civilians injuries were reported, although fire fighters suffered their usual unreported job-related damage from fighting such a large, hot fire.



The part of the Prince George's County courthouse that burned is almost 300 years old. Monuments in front of the courthouse honor local heroes from the years just after the Revolution. John Wilkes Booth ran in front of it when he fled federal authorities after killing the President. Numerous trials including that of George Wallace's would-be assassin have taken place in that courthouse. It is pretty much the only building of note in the former tobacco town; the courthouse and the County Administrative Building across the street employ or serve as workplaces for almost everyone in Upper Marlboro on any given day. Upper Marlboro may not be the smallest county seat in Maryland, but a geographically remote, tiny town governs Maryland's second largest county.



We can expect a lot of delays and difficulties not only in Upper Marlboro but throughout Maryland's trial court system as attorneys seek to avoid the likely logjam in PG by filing elsewhere to the extent permissible under venue rules, among other likely headaches. As attorneys we should seek to assist Judges Missouri and Vaughan as they seek to handle the administrative difficulties of the Circuit and District Court.

The Mallet - Chick and Ruth's Delly Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

Annapolis is a wonderful place to live and work. When The Crab has court in Annapolis, particularly Circuit Court downtown, he enjoys going down to Chick and Ruth's Delly for a good meal time.



The deli is always crowded and with good reason. Situated in a narrow Main Street storefront, it has been a politico/lobbyist hang-out for decades. Fixed on the wall are a large number of brightly painted wooden signs bearing the names of dozens of politicians and Maryland public figures and the various specialty sandwiches named after them. When you come in and take a seat, you get a dish of delicious kosher pickles to tide you until your sandwich arrives. The Crab recommends the turkey reuben. Reasonably priced and good service.



165 Main Street, 21401.

410-269-6737

Why Crablaw? Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

The following is for newcomers to Maryland.

The Maryland blue crab Callinectes sapidus is the traditional summer delicacy of Marylanders. "Delicacy" doesn't really convey the brutality of the traditional method of eating crabs. One boils the crabs, seasons them liberally with Old Bay Seasoning and cracks them open with a light wooden mallet over a table of newspaper or butcher block paper. Actually, "one" doesn't do this either; Marylanders assault the pile of hard crabs en massedumped on the aforementioned newspaper or butcher block paper, with lots of jokes and stories and, by tradition, beer. It is a shell-picking, crude, stinking mess.

The Crab is pretty sure that John Kerry never ate hard crabs. Not really a windsurfer's meal. The dainty way Kerry tried to eat a South Philly cheesesteak early in his campaign tells me he would not handle a crab feast well. If Maryland watermen ever got enough time away from their crab pots and trot lines to go windsurfing, they wouldn't.

This log will have a recurring feature called "The Mallet." Maryland was once known as "the land of pleasant living," in the words of the slogan of the infamous, beloved National Bohemian brewery. We lawyers are not known for being pleasant; lawyer jokes aside, we are stressed out, nasty, uncivil and competitive. The Mallet will be a review of the good, pleasant things in life - good food, good music and good times. We attorneys have to work hard; the Crab believes in hard work, no apologies there. But hard work is not a moral virtue in itself; lots of attorneys have work ethic-ed themselves into isolation, divorce, poor parenting, drug abuse, depression, malpractice, sanctions and disbarment. The Mallet will start with reviews of good food near courthouses but you can count on the Mallet to give you good reasons NOT to spend your whole life in the office. Enjoy!

Check-21 and Attorney Escrow Accounts Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

Attorneys in Maryland and elsewhere owe extensive ethical duties to their clients, but perhaps no duty is more severe than that owed to the rightful owners of escrowed funds. Numerous court rules, ethical rules under the Maryland Lawyers' Rules of Professional Conduct and statutes govern attorney escrow account management. The new rules under the "Check 21" check expediting program may have serious implications for attorney escrow account management.



Put simply, Check-21 is a set of new banking regulations that accelerates the check clearance procedures in part by eliminating the actual transfer of paper checks. Until recently, it was necessary for checks to be physically negotiated and presented through the federal reserve clearing houses. Now, electronic "substitute checks" can pass as the evidence and virtual reality of the original paper, and at much faster clearance speeds than before.



Attorneys are NEVER supposed to spend escrow funds that have not yet cleared the bank; multiple rules and statutes combine to ban and punish this practice. Nonetheless, the Crab suspects that some attorneys "play the float," particularly attorneys who have large escrow balances from multiple large clients. The Crab does not endorse this practice and neither do the rules of professional conduct. Some attorneys may do it when blue-collar clients pay them with personal checks drawn on personal accounts; some of those checks do not clear the bank themselves, perhaps in some cases because the client is herself "playing the float" or otherwise.



What Check-21 does is to shorten the time that checks can clear the bank, limiting the window for funds to clear the bank. Some clients will persist in playing the float but losing, resulting in nasty overdrafts. An attorney who takes a last minute appeal, for example, may face a dilemma - rely on a client's check to clear the bank and risk an escrow violation, or delay and risk malpractice by blowing a deadline. One can avoid this now as before by insisting on hard money, but blue-collar clients may prefer to send a personal check than run out through the traffic to get hard funds. Under check-21, whatever room previously existed for borderline calls is gone forever.



A second issue is the likelihood of generalized trouble from banks in all accounts as the speed of negotiable paper increases. The Crab knows of one law office that found an unauthorized charge recently in its operating account of about $300.00. It was no big deal for that firm because it balances its books religiously and because it was not an escrow account. Who knows what could have happened if an escrow account had been implicated?



Check-21 may not have increased the likelihood of such an event directly. Since the speed of overall commercial paper will be increasing, however, the speed and frequency of errors, fraud, etc. will likely increase as well. For clients the worst likely event is a bad check fee or maybe some cascading bounces. For licensed attorneys using escrow accounts, the likely result is a nasty letter from Bar Counsel and an investigation. No substitute exists for strict escrow account management and reconciliation, especially in the age of lightning-fast virtual checks.

Welcome aboard! Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

Crablaw Weekly welcomes you! We hope you enjoy your visits here!



Crablaw Weekly is a new internet column on Maryland law and legal practice for attorneys and everyone who works in, with or against the legal profession. You will see features on wide ranging subjects from appellate case analysis and law practice management to restaurant reviews and other suggestions on how to spend "non-billable" time.



We want to be useful and enjoyable for attorneys, legal administrators, court staff, judges and anyone else who finds the law or the legal profession interesting.



Most posts will come from "the Crab," an attorney of about ten years who practices with a medium-sized law firm near Baltimore.