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.
In any event, the Maryland Court of Special Appeals ruled in favor of the Town of Oxford in a case regarding petition signatures stemming from a dispute over the regulation of mooring regulations for buoys adjacent to the town. This opinion reverses a Talbot County Circuit Court judge’s summary judgment ruling in favor of a resident who had granted a judgment in favor of an Oxford resident who had challenged a town resolution on mooring.
You can read the opinion here. I tried to understand it and gave up.