The following protocol was developed to establish criteria for publishing opinions from the Business and Technology Case Management Program.
Revised Protocol
The Maryland Business and Technology Case Management Program Implementation Committee recommended that an “opinion database” be created to publish judicial opinions arising from cases in the program.
According to the report, the database would “provide lawyers and litigants with a growing body of predictive information at the trial court level to advise clients on likely rulings.” The report also indicated that the opinion database would “encourage collegiality and consistency among the judges.”
The Opinion Committee of the Program welcomes for publication any judicial opinions which address a substantive area of particular interest to the business and technology community, procedural matters for which there is little direct legal appellate authority (i.e., class certification), evidentiary issues (i.e., expert witness issues), or matters involving science or technology. Any submitted opinion should contain the relevant legal issues and citations to applicable case law or other authorities (statutes, treatises, and law review articles).
Procedures for Submission of an Opinion
- A program judge may submit an opinion or ruling for publication by completing a transmittal form below and electronically submitting the form and the text of the opinion to Lisa Mannisi, Administrative Office of the Courts. The opinion shall be submitted by e-mail in MS Word or WordPerfect. Please e-mail any proposed opinion for publication to [email protected].
- Any submission should include a brief synopsis of why the submitting Judge thinks that the opinion should be published.
- The Opinion Committee of the Program will review all submissions in order to determine the opinion’s suitability for publication. The committee may choose to consult with the judge who submitted the opinion before making a decision. All committee decisions are final.
- Any opinions published on the website will be considered to be in the public domain and may be republished by any person or entity seeking to do so. Therefore, any ruling or opinion that is under seal or contains confidential data should not be submitted.
- All opinions published on the website will be assigned a citation utilizing the year and number of the opinion added in sequential order for that year. For example, “2003 MDBT 5” would be the fifth opinion reported for the year 2003. All opinions will also be published on Westlaw and Lexis with the database citation.
- All opinions published on the website will remain part of the permanent database once submitted and approved and will, in ordinary circumstances, not be removed.
The transmittal form is available in Word. Please fill out the form, save the form with a file name that includes the judge's last name and bt - for example; smith_bt.doc.
- Transmittal form (MS Word)
Send both the transmittal form and the opinion to Lisa Mannisi at [email protected].
- A submitting judge will also be responsible for advising the committee as to any appellate review of published opinions.