Above the Law has a wacky story on a motion filed by a defense lawyer to remove the woman showing her large boobs from counsels' table. Turns out it was the lawyer's wife who is his paralegal who tries every case with him.
Warning to all in 2011: file a wacky motion - particularly one with the slightest sex component to it - it is going to be posted all of the Internet and, most likely, you are going to get mocked.
The Maryland Court of Appeals decided a Public Information Act (PIA) request by someone who wanted to snoop into records involving the construction of a University of Maryland Hospital. UMMS refused to produce the records on the grounds that it is not the government because it is not an agency or otherwise a part of the state of Maryland government.
The snooper is community activist Reverend Daki Napata who 20 years ago unsuccessfully tried to unseat Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke. What is Reverend Napata's concern? I have no idea.
Anyway, Reverend Napata lost twice below. Judge Matricciani denied his motion for summary judgment on his complaint and Judge Murdock dismissed the Complaint completely, finding that UMMS is not an instrumentality of the state of Maryland and therefore is not subject to the Public Information Act (PIA).
Both the Maryland Court of Special Appeals and the Maryland Court of Appeals disagreed with Judge Murdock, finding that because the state of Maryland maintains a high level of control over UMMS operations UMMS is an instrumentality of the state of Maryland for the purposes of the PIA.
Yet both courts also agreed that the case should be dismissed because UMMS’s enacting statute expressly exempts it from any laws “affecting only governmental or public entities.” That is a deal killer for snooping on UMMS.
The Plaintiff was represented by Edward Smith, Jr. and Kerrie Campbell. The hospital went for the big guns and hired Hogan & Hartson (Hogan Lovells now?).
You can read the full opinion here.
Miles & Stockbridge, an old school Maryland law firm that occupied an old school space, will move its Baltimore office in 2013 to 100 Light Street, a building I still call the "Legg Mason Building" even though Legg Mason is long gone.
Miles & Stockbridge's 10 Light Street location was a throwback to a different era, right down to the elevators that terrified. Why is Miles moving its 275 employees to the old Legg Mason Building that is now called the Transamerica Tower? I don't know but I have a guess: sweetheart deal. In this market, if you are looking to grab 120,000 square feet and you have been in business for a long time, you are a sought after tenant. I'd love to know what they are paying per square foot.
