Bar Admissions

No. 57  Board of Public Works, et al. v. K. Hovnanian's Four Seasons at Kent Island, LLC

Issues – Environmental Law – 1) Was Appellee required to await a final administrative decision and exhaust statutory administrative remedies before bringing an action for mandamus, injunction, and declaratory judgment to challenge the administrative procedure adopted to evaluate Appellee’s application for a State wetlands license? 2) Did the trial court err in substituting its judgment for that of the Board with respect to remediating the Wetlands Administrator’s conflict of interest, which involved a previously undisclosed relationship with one of Appellee’s attorneys and his law firm? 3) Did the trial court err in entering a writ of mandamus directing the Board to issue a decision on Appellee’s application for a State wetlands license by October 6, 2014, confining the facts that the Board may consider to those contained in that portion of the administrative record that existed on July 24, 2013, and limiting what the Board may consider in any future action on the project?

Attorney for Appellant: Julia Doyle Bernhardt
Attorneys for Appellee: John H. Zink, III and Joseph A. Stevens

AG No. 86 (2009 T.) Attorney Grievance Commission of Maryland v. Grason Eckel

Attorney for Petitioner: Dolores O. Ridgell
Attorney for Respondent: Michael C. Maloney

No. 69 Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission v. LaFarge North America, Inc.

Issues – Public Utilities – 1) Did CSA err in holding that a trial court may exceed the permissible scope of judicial review when considering a “deemed” rejection of a refund claim under PUA § 25-106? 2) Did CSA err in upholding the trial court’s order mandating that WSSC’s investigative files be produced as part of the agency record pursuant to Md. Rule 7-206?

Attorney for Petitioner: Heather L. Ashbury
Attorney for Respondent: Mark F. Gabler

No. 68 Willie Ford, et al. v. Antwerpen Motorcars, LTD., et al.

Issue – Commercial Law – Under Md. law, may a car dealer force its customers into binding arbitration of a claim arising from a vehicle sales transaction, when the vehicle sales contract does not contain an arbitration agreement and Md. regulations governing vehicle sales transactions require the vehicle sales contract to “contain[] all agreements of the parties”?

Attorney for Appellant: Benjamin H. Carney
Attorneys for Appellee: Price O. Gielen and Brian M. Boyle

No. 66  Ottis E. Breeding, Jr., et al. v. Christian Nicholas Koste

Issues – Real Property – 1) Does the “woodlands exception” apply to cases involving adverse possession as well as those involving prescription? 2) If the “woodlands exception” applies to adverse possession cases, does it apply to the facts of this case? 3) Assuming, arguendo, the “woodlands exception” does apply and the use of the property was initially permissive, did there come a time when the character of the use changed and became adverse?

Attorney for Petitioner: Anne C. Ogletree
Attorney for Respondent: Christopher F. Drummond

No. 72  State of Maryland v. Ronnie A. Hunt, Jr.

Issue – Criminal Law – Did CSA incorrectly reverse the trial court’s denial of Respondent’s amended petition for writ of actual innocence without a hearing where Respondent did not satisfy the statutory requirements of Section 8-301 and where the CSA ruling was inconsistent with its own case authority on the issue?

Attorney for Petitioner: Mary Ann Ince
Attorney for Respondent: Alan Carl Lazerow

No. 73  State of Maryland v. Kevin Hardy

Issues – Criminal Law – Did CSA incorrectly reverse the trial court’s denial of Respondent’s amended petition for writ of actual innocence without a hearing where Respondent did not satisfy the statutory requirements of Section 8-301 and where the CSA ruling was inconsistent with its own case authority on the issue?

Attorney for Petitioner: Mary Ann Ince
Attorney for Respondent: Daniel Kobrin

No. 70  Alexander Dykes v. State of Maryland

Issues – Criminal Law – 1) When it finds meritorious grounds for granting a motion to discharge counsel, what is the extent of the trial court’s authority to appoint counsel? 2) After finding meritorious reasons for discharge and after discharging both Petitioner’s public defender specifically and the Office of the Public Defender generally, did the trial court err in denying Petitioner’s repeated pretrial requests for court-appointed counsel on the grounds that he was now “on his own” and that it did not have the authority to appoint counsel?

Attorney for Petitioner: Michael T. Torres
Attorney for Respondent: Benjamin Harris

No. 77  Lydia G. Wilcox, et al. v. Tristan J. Orellano

Issue – Torts – Did CSA err in concluding that a stipulation of dismissal signed by both parties in a health care malpractice claim constituted a “voluntary dismissal ... by the party who commenced the action” as intended by MD Code Ann., Courts & Jud. Proc. § 5-119(a)?

Attorney for Petitioner: Alan H. Silverberg
Attorney for Respondent: Michelle R. Mitchell

No. 67  State of Maryland v. Harold Albert Norton, Jr.

Issue – Criminal Law – Did CSA err in determining that Norton’s right to confrontation under the federal constitution was violated where a DNA expert testified regarding the work of another DNA analyst, and that expert was a supervisor in the same lab, reviewed the work of the other analyst, and came to his own conclusion that was consistent with the conclusion of the other analyst, but the analyst herself did not testify?

Attorney for Petitioner: Gary E. O'Connor
Attorney for Respondent: Bradford C. Peabody

No. 75  Scott Shader, et ux. v. Hampton Improvement Assoc., Inc.

Issues – Real Property – 1) Whether the trial court properly held that Respondent was not estopped from claiming that the covenant in question was still valid in light of a prior, unappealed ruling that the covenant had been waived by abandonment? 2) Whether the trial court properly held that the covenant at issue had not been waived or abandoned? 3) Whether beneficiaries of covenants can permit violations of one part of a covenant and still seek enforcement of other parts of the same covenant? 4) Whether the trial court abused its discretion in not granting pre-trial summary judgment, where collateral estoppel should have prevented the Respondent from re-litigating facts which had been found against it in an unappealed prior action?

Attorney for Petitioner: Jeffrey L. Foreman
Attorneys for Respondent: Michael W. Siri and Carolyn Mech

No. 71 Suzanne Scales Windesheim, et al. v. Frank Larocca, et al.

Issues – Commercial Law – 1) Did CSA err in holding that an employee of a lender is a “lender” for purposes of civil liability under the Maryland Secondary Mortgage Loan Law (“SMLL”)? 2) Did CSA err by holding that the Respondents stated a claim on which relief could be granted under the SMLL? 3) Did CSA err by holding that a cause of action under the SMLL was “another specialty” under § 5-102 of the Maryland Courts and Judicial Proceedings Article and therefore entitled to a 12-year statute of limitations? 4) Did CSA err by holding that it was a question of fact to be decided by the jury as to whether Respondents’ claims against Petitioner were barred by the 3-year statute of limitations under § 5-101 of the Maryland Courts and Judicial Proceedings Article? 5) Whether as a matter of law a defendant may be liable under the SMLL, where the false advertising that is the purported basis for the claim occurred orally in a private setting, and where the record contains no evidence that the defendant participated in any way in the communication of the statements allegedly constituting false advertising?

Attorneys for Petitioner: James E. Carbine and Daniel J. Tobin
Attorneys for Respondent: Gregory T. Lawrence and G. Russell Donaldson

No. 65 Derrick Arthur Counts v. State of Maryland

Issue – Criminal Law – Is the value of the goods stolen an element of theft, such that amending a charging document on the morning of trial from theft under $1,000 (a misdemeanor) to theft of goods valued between $1,000 and $10,000 (a felony) constitutes a change to the character of the offense requiring the consent of both parties?

Attorney for Petitioner: Wyatt Feeler
Attorney for Respondent: James E. Williams

No. 76 Nancy Lee Kathryn Thompson, et al. v. UBS Financial Services, Inc., et al.

Issues – Torts – 1) Should this Court adopt RESTATEMENT (SECOND) OF TORTS § 242(2) and, in doing so, find that CSA erred in reversing the jury verdict for petitioners on conversion? 2) Did CSA err in reversing the jury verdict for petitioners on constructive fraud?

Attorneys for Petitioner: Edward P. Parent and William N. Sinclair
Attorneys for Respondent: Steven Gould and Mitchell Y. Mirviss