Apr 7, 2010
State delegate to UMd. law clinic: “We’ll be watching”
Lawmakers took their foot off the throat of the University of Maryland’s environmental law clinic last night, but that doesn’t mean we’ve heard the last of this issue.
After law students filed a suit against a chicken farm on the Eastern shore and the poultry giant Perdue, lawmakers amended the state operating budget to tie funding for the clinic to a requirement that the clinic disclose its client list.
The Senate wanted to withhold $250,000; the House, $500,000. The House amended its budget on the floor last week to take out the funding’s link to the reporting requirement. And Tuesday night, at a conference committee meeting on the budget, the Senate agreed to go with the House.
“We thought that was a fair approach that achieved our goals without the confusion of the initial Senate proposal,” said Sen. Richard Madaleno Jr., a Montgomery County Democrat and a member of the Senate’s negotiating team.
Madaleno said the Senate wanted to “understand what the law clinics are doing, to appreciate what their role is.”
Del. Norman Conway, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee and an Eastern Shore Democrat, said the law clinics actions were “prosecutorial.”
“My goal was purely to say the clinic is an instructional tool,” he said. “Any kind of case they take should provide students with experience on all sides of it. I think what they did with the environmental law clinic was one-sided.”
Asked if he thought the law school had gotten the message, Conway said yes.
But, he added sternly: “We’ll be watching.”
Compare that with what law school Dean Phoebe A. Haddon said last month: “The moment you attach a requirement of reporting to money, you’re saying, ‘We’ll be watching you.’ ”
She’s right. The lawmakers will be watching.
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The arrogance and ignorance of the Eastern Shore legislators on this matter is over the top. They ought to be paying more attention to their own farmers and less to the Maryland clinic. By all public accounts, the Hudson farm is a major polluter and the information on what is going on there and how the Hudsons have tried to conceal it has been widely available for months even in newspapers on the Eastern Shore. The Hudsons denied state inspectors access to their property (four times), for example, so the State Dept of the Environment would not be able to determine if the sludge pile in question violated federal and state statutes, and even tried to cover it to prevent it being photographed from the air. The e-coli readings in the Bay downstream from the pile are off the charts. The Dept eventually fined the Hudsons for not maintaining the pile in a proper manner and it rarely fines anyone. Someone also should explain to Norman Conway that law school clinics are permitted to represent only non-profits and individuals who qualify financially (are below income caps), and couldn’t represent “all sides” in this matter even if it wanted to (and all sides had a case). It would violate the Clinic’s own legal limits. (A farm raising 80,000 chickens is hardly a non-profit and Perdue farms is even further from this status.). This good old boy attitude of “one law for me and another for the rest of the world” that seems alive and well on the Eastern Shore has to stop. Maryland is a border state, not a southern one. If the Hudsons and Perdue farms think what they’re doing is legal then let them tell it to the judge, just like anyone else.
“After law students filed a suit against a chicken farm”
The student’s don’t file suit. The students represent the client who is filing suit.
When you’re in a car accident, your lawyer does not sue the other person, you sue the other person, your laywer represents you.
The arrogance and ignorance of the Eastern Shore legislators on this matter is over the top. They ought to be paying more attention to their own farmers and less to the Maryland clinic. By all public accounts, the Hudson farm is a major polluter and the information on what is going on there and how the Hudsons have tried to conceal it has been widely available for months even in newspapers on the Eastern Shore. The Hudsons denied state inspectors access to their property (four times), for example, so the State Dept of the Environment would not be able to determine if the sludge pile in question violated federal and state statutes, and even tried to cover it to prevent it being photographed from the air. The e-coli readings in the Bay downstream from the pile are off the charts. The Dept eventually fined the Hudsons for not maintaining the pile in a proper manner and it rarely fines anyone. Someone also should explain to Norman Conway that law school clinics are permitted to represent only non-profits and individuals who qualify financially (are below income caps), and couldn’t represent “all sides” in this matter even if it wanted to (and all sides had a case). It would violate the Clinic’s own legal limits. (A farm raising 80,000 chickens is hardly a non-profit and Perdue farms is even further from this status.). This good old boy attitude of “one law for me and another for the rest of the world” that seems alive and well on the Eastern Shore has to stop. Maryland is a border state, not a southern one. If the Hudsons and Perdue farms think what they’re doing is legal then let them tell it to the judge, just like anyone else.
The arrogance and ignorance of the Eastern Shore legislators on this matter is over the top. They ought to be paying more attention to their own farmers and less to the Maryland clinic. By all public accounts, the Hudson farm is a major polluter and the information on what is going on there and how the Hudsons have tried to conceal it has been widely available for months even in newspapers on the Eastern Shore. The Hudsons denied state inspectors access to their property (four times), for example, so the State Dept of the Environment would not be able to determine if the sludge pile in question violated federal and state statutes, and even tried to cover it to prevent it being photographed from the air. The e-coli readings in the Bay downstream from the pile are off the charts. The Dept eventually fined the Hudsons for not maintaining the pile in a proper manner and it rarely fines anyone. Someone also should explain to Norman Conway that law school clinics are permitted to represent only non-profits and individuals who qualify financially (are below income caps), and couldn’t represent “all sides” in this matter even if it wanted to (and all sides had a case). It would violate the Clinic’s own legal limits. (A farm raising 80,000 chickens is hardly a non-profit and Perdue farms is even further from this status.). This good old boy attitude of “one law for me and another for the rest of the world” that seems alive and well on the Eastern Shore has to stop. Maryland is a border state, not a southern one. If the Hudsons and Perdue farms think what they’re doing is legal then let them tell it to the judge, just like anyone else.
The arrogance and ignorance of the Eastern Shore legislators on this matter is over the top. They ought to be paying more attention to their own farmers and less to the Maryland clinic. By all public accounts, the Hudson farm is a major polluter and the information on what is going on there and how the Hudsons have tried to conceal it has been widely available for months even in newspapers on the Eastern Shore. The Hudsons denied state inspectors access to their property (four times), for example, so the State Dept of the Environment would not be able to determine if the sludge pile in question violated federal and state statutes, and even tried to cover it to prevent it being photographed from the air. The e-coli readings in the Bay downstream from the pile are off the charts. The Dept eventually fined the Hudsons for not maintaining the pile in a proper manner and it rarely fines anyone. Someone also should explain to Norman Conway that law school clinics are permitted to represent only non-profits and individuals who qualify financially (are below income caps), and couldn’t represent “all sides” in this matter even if it wanted to (and all sides had a case). It would violate the Clinic’s own legal limits. (A farm raising 80,000 chickens is hardly a non-profit and Perdue farms is even further from this status.). This good old boy attitude of “one law for me and another for the rest of the world” that seems alive and well on the Eastern Shore has to stop. Maryland is a border state, not a southern one. If the Hudsons and Perdue farms think what they’re doing is legal then let them tell it to the judge, just like anyone else.