I wrote last week about the insanity I experienced in my drive-by the world of collections. Here is an appropriate story: a utility company demanding payment on a bill of $0.00 with a threat of sending the outstanding balance to collections.
One thing to point out before I even begin this post: our law firm does not handle collection cases involving HOAs (or any other kind of collection cases - just serious personal injury claim). The purpose of the Maryland Lawyer Blog is to allow me to muse on topics outside of Maryland personal injury cases. So I feel compelled to put in this caveat so that we get calls on a collections issue. (Honestly, I don't know anyone who defends HOA collection cases.)
Anyway, with that unnecessarily long prelude, a Maryland homeowners' association in Prince George's County is suing P.G. County Executive Jack Johnson for failure to pay his homeowner's association dues. In an article I read on this case a few minutes ago, his lawyer defending the case is quoted as saying: "It's a racket. There is no oversight or regulation."
Exactly. It is absolutely ridiculous how these HOAs run amok going after essentially their own clients. I'm in full support of requiring people to pay their bills and charging them a penalty in the process for not paying their debt. I recently handled one of these types of cases for an employee who made a really honest mistake, thinking she had prepaid for the year. It is absolutely torture dealing with these HOAs that have the agreements with homeowners so rigged that they can extort ridiculous fees that are so out-of-line with the crime of missing a few payments. I also think many deliberately avoid advising the homeowner of the debt so the penalties accumulate.
Then there is dealing with the HOA collection lawyer which is an ordeal in and of itself. In our employee's case, the guy was impossible to get on the phone. Most HOA collection lawyers are essentially running a factory. Get a live person on the phone? It virtually takes an act of Congress.
These HOA documents are the ultimate adhesion contracts: if you are buying a house, you would confess to murder in the HOA language before you would let it hold up the purchase of the home. Something should be done to put tighter screws to these HOAs. How about just a clause that says that the HOA agrees that the penalties should be reasonable and in line with what the finder of fact believes is the true cost of the debt collection?
Apple faces a lawsuit over an allegation that its iPad easily overheats and turns off.
"The iPad does not live up to the reasonable consumer's expectations created by Apple insofar as the iPad overheats so quickly under common weather conditions that it does not function for prolonged use outdoors, or in many other warm conditions," according to the lawsuit filed in federal court in Oakland last week.
It seems to me if your iPad does not work, Apple should get you a new one. But that really should not be a federal case since no one I know that has an iPad has this problem.
I like that lawyers can file lawsuits to protect consumers from bad products even when the damage to the individual consumer is low and merely economic because it discourages companies that are willing to allow bad products on the market. What I don't like is that most of the cases that I read about seem ridiculous.
A divided Maryland Court of Appeals took away a Baltimore County jury verdict against Bank of America on Thursday in a case relevant to personal injury lawyers to the extent that it underscores when expert testimony may be needed at trial.
This case appears to be the classic "money grubber woman takes advantage of old man" story. BOA allowed said money grubber to add her name on to the man's account. After his death, his son looked at the bank statements and brought a claim on behalf of the Estate against BOA for breach of contract and negligence for allowing the woman to be added onto the account in the first place.
The jury bought it, awarding $23,475 on the breach of contract claim and $7,600 on the negligence claim. The Maryland Court of Special Appeals reversed, finding that expert testimony was necessary to establish BOA's standard of care when adding an individual’s name to a bank account.
The Maryland high court affirmed the CSA ruling, agreeing that expert testimony was required to establish the scope of the bank’s duty unless the alleged negligence so obviously deviated from the applicable standard of care that the jury could appreciate the deviation without expert testimony. In this case, the court felt that the negligence was not obvious because the process of fraud avoidance “may occur behind closed doors, out of the sight of the customer, and may involve numerous unknown procedures.”
The dissent says it does not matter how the sausage is made - if the system is flawed the system is flawed so it does not matter what happened behind closed doors. I don't have a big opinion on this case but I certainly agree that it seems like overkill to have to bring a banking expert in to state the obvious: you have to verify signatures and make sure people have the authority they claim to have.
The problem with this case for consumer lawyers is that it imposes a requirement of an expert witness to prove negligence in cases where the case is not going to have a large enough upside to justify an expert. Maryland accident lawyers have been using the 10-104 mechanism to get around the need for expert testimony in small car accident cases. But, under this ruling, a lot of valid small cases are not going to be brought because the lawyers and clients will not want to front the money for an expert.
A class-action suit alleges that Facebook's new privacy settings exposes Facebook users to "identity theft, harassment, embarrassment, intrusion and all types of cyber crime."
I really can't think of a dumber lawsuit. Couldn't these victims just get off Facebook?
The Maryland Daily Record reports today that the little guy might get over on the man. Tens of thousands of Maryland debt-collection lawsuits may be dismissed because the collections firm that brought the claims, Mann Bracken LLP, is going under. The firm, which had office around the country, had an office here in Rockville. If these cases are dismissed, the firm faces a creditors legal malpractice action. I wonder if they have coverage.
I would think Maryland District Court judges everywhere are cracking champagne. These cases must be incredibly boring and time consuming.
I was amazed that there is actually a blog that is tracking the fall of this law firm. Can you imagine? I guess personal injury lawyers are beloved compared to collection lawyers. You can find this blog for yourself here.
I'm a big fan of the little guy but I cannot exactly rejoice when there are no consequences for not paying your bills.
Leo Hylan has a series of blog posts about an issue I had not heard about. Apparently, Verizon put the names of 12,500 people in Washington County, Maryland who had unlisted numbers in their most recent yellow pages. These people actually paid to have their number unlisted. (Did you know that you have to pay to have your number unlisted? I had no idea?)
Our lawyers are not handling these cases (we only handle personal injury claims) but I think Leo may be. You can find his information at the bottom of this blog post.
Leo Hylan has a series of blog posts about an issue I had not heard about. Apparently, Verizon put the names of 12,500 people in Washington County, Maryland who had unlisted numbers in their most recent yellow pages. These people actually paid to have their number unlisted. (Did you know that you have to pay to have your number unlisted? I had no idea?)
Our lawyers are not handling these cases (we only handle personal injury claims) but I think Leo may be. You can find his information at the bottom of this blog post.
The Severna Park Fitness and Health Blog reports that Harbor Nautilus in Westminster has been charged with a number of violations of Maryland’s Heath Club law. Many consumers have trepidations about health and fitness clubs taking money out of their accounts electronically every month. This is a reminder that it is worth it to look at your bank statements every month. This might be a statement of the obvious but I think an alarming number of consumers in Maryland do not.
The tough thing about a case like this is that a lawyer is not going to touch it with a ten foot pole because the economics involve such small amounts of money. Accordingly, the state of Maryland is really the first and last resource to protect consumers.
Dear Maryland Daily Record Editor:
Unless they hail from Hollywood, I don’t expect lawyers to be savvy enough to have had enough foresight not to be all smiles on an article about bankruptcy, but I think your paper could have been more thoughtful. (Maryland Lawyer cover story, “The Business of Bankruptcy Law,” October 6, 2008)
In hindsight, I am sure these attorneys did not want to appear gleeful about the fact that the misfortune of others has caused their business to skyrocket.
If ever there was a cause for the photographer to tell their subjects to NOT to smile, it was for the picture that accompanied an article about bankruptcy.
This editorial was written by Mike Henderson with the Baltimore Metro Chapter of Associated Builders and Contractors. Good for Mr. Henderson for writing this editorial. The Maryland Daily Record also deserves credit for publishing this editorial. Mike got it right; the Daily Record and these lawyers got it wrong. Everyone agrees, we can all move on.
A friend of mine was telling his much younger brother recently that it would help him stay out of trouble if he would get good grades. He told him "everything goes down better with good grades."
Right now, lawyers - most notably personal injury lawyers - are the kids with bad grades. Anything we do either individually or as a group that is questionable is immediately given scrutiny. Every lawyer should be keeping this in mind.
The Severna Park Fitness and Health Blog, published by Club One Fitness in Millersville, has a post today on a Maryland Daily Record article written by Danny Jacobs involving a woman who sued the Maryland Athletic Club ("MAC") over a theft that occurred at the club. The case was settled by the Maryland Athletic Club just before it went to trial in Baltimore City earlier this month.
I'm surprised the Maryland Athletic Club did not file a motion for summary judgment based on what I'm sure is a clause in their contract that says they are not responsible for thefts at their gym even if the theft is due to the Maryland Athletic Club's negligence. (I'm assuming, I have never read the MAC's contract.) Accordingly to Seigneur v. National Fitness Inst., Inc., 132 Md. App. 271(2000), this is permissible contract language.
Elsewhere, I have talked about how so many silly cases in Maryland find their way to Circuit Court which decreases average jury verdicts in Maryland well below the national average. This is yet another example.
A Montgomery County jury ordered Wells Fargo Bank to pay $1.25 million in damages for allegedly targeting low-income minority customers for loans they could not afford. One million dollars of the award was punitive damages.
I hate when people comment on verdicts when they really don’t know the evidence. Well, unless those “people” are me. I cannot imagine facts that would lead me to award punitive damages in a case like this. I’m not a huge fan of punitive damages anyway but, in this case, regardless of the facts, this woman took out a loan that she could not pay back. Maybe the facts are such that she deserves something. But not $1.25 million.
In a Howard County case against local car giant Antwerpen ("Jack says yes!"), the Maryland Court of Special Appeals ruled that a purchaser of a used car must offer expert testimony as to causation where she claimed that the repairs to her car were needed based on defects in the car at the time of sale in violation of the Magnuson-Moss Act.
Plaintiff advanced two arguments as to why an expert was not needed. First, she argues that, under the Magnuson-Moss Act, a consumer need not prove a specific defect. Second, she argues that Maryland law does not require expert testimony where, as here, the particular product requires so many repairs. Interestingly, Plaintiff's lawyer had named an expert but then withdrew the expert in response to a motion in limine to exclude the expert.
Writing for the majority, Judge Harrell rejects both arguments. In perhaps a sign that Judge Murphy is going to be a voice for the rights of consumers (and presumably injury victims), he wrote a concurring opinion agreeing that although an expert was needed in this case because there was evidence that work was done on the car outside control of the defendant, he wanted to make clear that an expert is not needed in every breach of warranty claim involving a product defect. Specifically, Judge Murphy wrote that if a plaintiff testifies that, "I bought the car new, it's still under warranty, it hasn't been stolen or broken into, I have complied with all of the manufacturer's maintenance recommendations, I have made no modifications to the car but it won't go more that 15 miles per hour," then a jury question is generated even in the absence of expert testimony.
Click here to read the full text of the opinion.
The Maryland Daily Record published a story today about a St. Mary’s County, Maryland man who is bringing suit against adultfriendfinder.com and three anonymous users of the site for defamation and false light invasion of privacy over the posting of sexually explicit pictures of his wife.
I hope more information comes out about this story because I have a lot of questions. First, the man claims that his reputation as a monogamous spouse has been smeared as a result of the inference that he is a swinger. This is nonsense on a number of levels. As a service to you, the loyal Maryland Lawyer Blog reader, I went to this website. There is no presumption that everyone on the site is part of a swinging couple. In fact, I think the major purpose of the site is to give couples a chance to pick up a third, if you will. This might cast some unfavorable impressions of his wife, who is very notably not a plaintiff, but it says very little about him and whether he has been faithful to his wife.
I would also be a bit curious to know exactly where sexually explicit pictures of his wife of 22 years came from in the first place. Three different users apparently have these pictures. There does not appear to be any suggestion that the pictures were stolen or unlawfully obtained.
I’m looking forward to seeing what develops from here. But I think this lawsuit is frivolous regardless of further facts, particularly against the website because the Communications Decency Act of 1996 bars claims against the website as a publisher. More to the point, I think all of this probably could have been avoided if the plaintiff or his lawyer had taken the time to have a long heart-to-heart talk with this man’s wife.
The Baltmore Sun reports that the Maryland Court of Appeals suggested during oral arguments in a foreclosure case Monday that the court may change with the times and alter notification procedures for foreclosures, which have been on the rise in Maryland and around the country as many of us have taken out loans we cannot afford. At issue in this case is the rule that allows that a home can be sold about two weeks after notification is sent to the homeowner. As in most states, there is no requirement that the notification actually be received by the homeowner.
In a separate but related story, the Baltimore Sun reports that Baltimore has filed suit against Wells Fargo Bank alleging that the bank violated federal housing law by specifically luring blacks into high-interest mortgages.
Interestingly, the city chose Relman & Dane, a Washington based law firm, to bring suit on Baltimore's behalf. Now, I realize from my 10 second review of their website to provide a link that they have a great deal of experience in this area of law. Still, are there no lawyers in Baltimore, who help support the city's tax base, that could have handled this case? Peter Holland, albeit in Annapolis, is quoted in the Maryland Daily Record about the case. He is one of the leading consumer rights advocates in the state. Did anyone ask him? I have no idea what the selection process was and I don't know much about this area of the law. But it would make sense to have someone from Maryland representing Baltimore in these kinds of cases.
Wednesday, a Cecil County judge awarded the plaintiff in a settled "lemon law" case more than $12,000.00 in attorney's fees. The case involves a complaint filed by the plaintiff which stated that her 2005 Hyundai was "useless" vehicle and had been taken into the dealership where she purchased it more than four times in a one year period for problems with a dashboard light. She claimed that Hyundai was in violation of Maryland's Automotive Enforcement Warranty Act and Consumer Protection Act, as well as the federal Magnuson-Moss Warranty Improvement Act.
Apparently, on the morning of trial, Hyundai offered the plaintiff a new vehicle and she accepted. Plaintiff, in asking for attorney's fees, alleged that she was the "prevailing party" and therefore eligible to receive attorneys' fees. Hyundai, of course, disagreed, claiming that the settlement was not an admission of liability.
I don't appreciate the nuances of consumer protection law but I am certainly pleased that Hyundai's offer to settle for what was apparently full value on the courthouse steps led this Cecil County court to find that she was the "prevailing party." We often have the same problem in personal injury cases when the insurance company makes the personal injury lawyers jump through hoop after hoop only to settle the case for the policy limits just before trial. A lot of time and money can be saved for everyone by offering fair value from the beginning.
