Blood v. Stoneridge at Fountain Green Homeowners is an interesting case not only because the opinion begins with an Elton John verse from “Don’t Let the Sun Come Down on Me.”
In Blood, two Harford County (Bel Air) homeowners installed solar panels on their roofs. Big solar fans apparently, they installed fifteen solar panels on the front roof and thirty-three solar panels on the rear roof.
The U.S. District Court issued an opinion in another “the bank was bad when it foreclosed on me when I wasn’t, you know, paying my mortgage” case.
Plaintiffs, Pasadena, Maryland residents, sued Bank of America alleging that the bank’s failure to process a mortgage modification, after the servicer informed them it would help them change their mortgage terms, was actionable. The big crime? Bank of America was only willing to lower the payment a bit.
Judge Catherine C. Blake dismissed the case, finding that:
In Koste v. Town of Oxford, Judge Robert A. Zarnoch starts out the Maryland Court of Special Appeals opinion like this:
Which comes first: a law’s enactment or a referendum drive? In this case, we consider the classic chicken/egg casualty riddle in the legislative/political setting. And in the context of petitioning to a referendum of a municipal annexation resolution, we conclude that the Legislature has required enactment to precede petitioning. We turn from the abstract to the concrete.
Honestly, I’m not sure what this means. In the bubble of personal injury cases in which I live, it is amazing to me how many other legal issues there are for judges to get their minds around.
I defended latex glove allergy lawsuits in the late ’90s/early ’00s. They were just awful cases for plaintiffs. But that does not minimize the suffering of many who have latex allergies, a little-talked about problem that really affects the lives of a few people.
In Meade v. Shangri-La Partnership, the Plaintiff had a severe latex allergy. She got it in the ’90s from latex gloves, as many healthcare providers did. She sent her child to preschool at the Children’s Manor Montessori in Howard County (I’m not sure if it was Ellicott City or Columbia). She wanted the preschool to remove latex gloves from the school so she could visit and “be part of [her] son’s preschool experience.”
To me, reading the case, while I sympathize with her injury, she sounds a little melodramatic. Anyway, the school made matters much worse by kicking the kid out because they feared a lawsuit. Seriously? Of course, a lawsuit is exactly what followed. What a mess.
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 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? Probably 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.
The Maryland Court of Appeals published its opinion in Wietzke v. Chesapeake Conference Association, a Silver Spring, Montgomery County case dealing with the law of nuisance (which I know nothing about).
The nutshell is that the church – Seventh Day Adventists – built a new parking lot which causes “repeated and continu[ed] flooding” of the residents next door. The neighbors demanded $3 million in damages which, you know, is what you ask for when someone floods your property a bit. Neighbor loses at trial but gets another crack because the Maryland high court reversed the trial judge’s decision.
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 will be posted all over the Internet and, most likely, you will get mocked.
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 kinds 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 fully support 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 an honest mistake, thinking she had prepaid for the year. It is absolute 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 that the penalties accumulate.
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 an 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.
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