Colleagues remember Eastern Shore judge

Retired Court of Appeals Judge Marvin Hugh Smith, a lifelong Eastern Shore resident who continued hearing cases at all judicial levels well into his 80s, died Monday. He was 94.

Known for his deep, booming voice that belied his small stature, Judge Smith sat on the Court of Appeals from 1968 until his retirement in 1986 when he reached age 70.

“He was known for his quality of work on the Court of Appeals,” said retired Judge Dale R. Cathell, one of Smith’s successors from the Eastern Shore on the state’s highest court. “He was an excellent writer and a good, all-around judge. I didn’t always agree with him, but I don’t know of any mistakes he made.”

Judge Smith was born in Federalsburg on Aug. 10, 1916. He became a leader of the Caroline County Bar Association and promoted his home region through his involvement with the Maryland State Bar Association.

“He was always a great champion of the Eastern Shore,” said Court of Special Appeals Judge Timothy E. Meredith, an Easton native. “He rarely missed an opportunity to talk about it, how it was a great place to live and raise a family.”

Meredith served as Judge Smith’s law clerk from 1977 to 1978 and called the experience the “driving force” in his wanting to be an appellate judge.

“I think the overriding key to his jurisprudence was common sense,” Meredith said. “I thought that virtually all cases I worked on for him reflected that.”

Judge Smith graduated from Washington College in 1937 and the University of Maryland School of Law four years later. He joined the Army in late 1941 and spent most of his four years in the service in counterintelligence, at one point overseeing all investigations at Air Transport Command installations around the world.

Judge Smith opened his general law practice in Denton in 1946 and stayed there until he was appointed to the Court of Appeals by Gov. Spiro T. Agnew. Judge Smith was, at the time, a rare Eastern Shore Republican, but Cathell said his rulings never reflected his political ideology.

“He was energetic and a true believer in the rule of law,” said Chief Judge Robert M. Bell in a statement. “He set the bar high for the judiciary and the legal profession.”

While Judge Smith had a limited number of actual law clerks (including Court of Appeals Judge Sally D. Adkins), he took all young, Eastern Shore lawyers under his wing, according to Robert A. Thornton Jr., president of the Caroline County Bar Association. That was partly because Judge Smith almost certainly was friendly with the lawyer’s parents, grandparents or great-grandparents.

“He knew everybody and everything that went on,” said Thornton, a Denton solo practitioner whose first law office was steps away from Judge Smith’s local office. “He had an institutional memory. Things you couldn’t get out of books you could get out of him.”

Thornton recalled appearing before Judge Smith in 2001 and receiving encouraging words after Thornton had been passed over for a circuit court vacancy.

“He said, ‘Mr. Thornton, I know it’s disappointing you didn’t get selected. But I never met a man who got knocked down who didn’t get up in a better place,’” Thornton said.

The encounter was not in an appellate courtroom, but in county district court. Judge Smith sat in circuit court from 1986 until 2004, despite having no trial court experience. Thornton believed he liked the personal interaction.

“He was not a judge to shrink away and hide from public contact,” Thornton said. “He might send you away, but he would talk with you first.”

Judge Smith was an active member of Union United Methodist Church in Federalsburg, where services will be held Saturday, teaching Sunday school from 1948 until 1996. He was also heavily involved in the Boy Scouts of America, becoming Caroline County’s first Eagle Scout in 1934 and organizing Federalsburg’s Cub Pack in 1946. Judge Smith had sat on the executive board of the Boy Scouts’ Delmarva Peninsula umbrella organization since 1967.

“I can’t think of a better man than he was,” Thornton said.

Judge Smith is survived by his wife of 68 years, Rebecca; two daughters, Melissa Smith Barnes of Littlestown, Pa., and Sarah J. Smith Pettegrew of Jacksonville, Fla.; a son, M. Hugh Smith Jr. of Denton; 11 grandchildren; and 13 great-grandchildren.