Maryland Lawyer Blog

Maryland Makes Debt Collection a Little Harder

The Maryland Court of Appeals has adopted new rules to make life harder for companies that buy up debt to obtain judgments against consumers. This does not take effect until January 1st, so expect a ton of activity in debt cases to clog up District Court dockets in the foreseeable future.

There is nothing wrong with buying "junk" debt. The problem is that to make money, these companies often have to run their business with a lot of upfront cash. They are not looking through the details of individual cases, they just run them through the assembly line. Imagine all of the home foreclosure short cuts on steroids. Do they know that the debtor has not contested the debt? Do they know the debtor's last known address? My guess? Pretty much not.

The court is trying to make these companies operate on a more level playing field and play fair in every individual case. Does this make debt collection harder? Absolutely.

Please keep in mind that I'm providing this information because it is interesting. Our lawyers do not handle debtor creditor cases of any kind.

The Washington Post reports that freshman Prince George’s County state delegate Tiffany T. Alston indicted on theft charges amid allegations that she spent thousands of dollars of campaign contributions to pay for wedding expenses and for the salary of an employee in her law firm.

The indictment says that Delegate Alston wrote herself checks from the account of “Friends of Tiffany Alston” and then cashed the checks for personal use, including picking up the tab for this wedding. She is charge with one count of felony theft, one count of misdemeanor theft, one count of fraudulent misappropriation by a fiduciary and two election law violations.

Alston was last in the news when she sponsored a gay marriage bill and then voted against it. Somewhere, John Kerry and Mitt Romney nod approvingly.

She had a nice story going: her own law firm, a state delegate at age 33, and even the ultimate sign of status in America: her own Wikepedia page. She also had this great Washington City Paper puff piece talking about, ironically, her life as a philanthropist.

Crazy story.

Baltimore City's Lawyers Under Siege: Fairly?

• $30,000 for a broken wrist, $90,000 if it's the whole arm? Is Baltimore City taking a harder line on settlement negotiations in police misconduct cases?
• Maryland political corruption cases galore, coming to a courthouse near you.
• "The woman's emotional testimony was no laughing matter. But the underwear sticking out of her low-rise pants was well, a little distracting." HT: Maryland Family Law.
• Sen. Cardin has reintroduced legislation to prohibit racial profiling by law enforcement.
• A 20-year-old Maryland man will plead guilty to federal sexual exploitation charges for blackmailing teenage girls in several states into sending him sexually explicit material.

There are a lot of new judges to be selected by Governor O'Malley in the near future. Here is the list of applicants.

Not Something You Want Tossed at You

A Washington lawyer is accused of throwing a live power line at another motorist during a road-rage incident after Hurricane Irene. The attorney faces a variety of charges in Montgomery County, including first-degree assault and reckless endangerment.

It is a wild story: the guy allegedly tailgated/chased a car until they reached a downed power line, which had been blown into the road by Irene. Pinning him down, he threw the power line at his car while kicking it and trying to break into the poor guy's car.

It sounds like something transcendentally wacky happened here but the story does not make a ton of sense. Wouldn't you just pull away as opposed to lying in your car taking this abuse?

I tried to figure out what kind of lawyer this guy is and where he practiced. But there are so many stories online about this debacle that you can't find anything else on him. Anyway, here is one post on this crazy case.