If my home were ever burglarized, I think the strangest thing a thief could pilfer would be an 18-inch-tall sailor statue that sits on a side table in my living room. (Old Salty is good at his job; I’ve never gotten seasick nor have I been attacked by pirates while sitting on my sofa.)

I thought about this after I received a press release from Baltimore County police yesterday warning residents that the burglar of a Monkton home took two hand grenades that possibly could explode.

The suspect stole so-called “pineapple” hand grenades commonly used in World War II. Here are the key sentences from the police e-mail:

“The caretaker of the weapons does not remember whether the grenades were disabled or are live. These grenades are DANGEROUS, and can cause injury or death.”

I would have to echo a person who responded to The Sun’s story about the burglary: why did the homeowner have possible live grenades in his home?

The Supreme Court posed for a new portrait this morning, allowing the media to photograph them as a group. Listen, I know these folks handle the most important cases in the land and that sternness and gravity are pretty much job requirements. But would it kill them to smile?

I’m going to put aside the fact that they’re all looking in different directions, because there were clearly many cameras in the room. With that in mind, compare for a moment the various versions of today’s SCOTUS portrait with the official photo of Maryland’s Court of Appeals. With one exception (OK, one-and-a-half–Judge Murphy’s got a half-smile), these folks looks pleased as punch to be on the court and sitting/standing for this portrait. Chief Judge Bell looks downright jolly.

By contrast, only Chief Justice Roberts and new Justice Sotomayor (fresh off a few months when she was expected to smile on cue constantly) actually look happy in all the SCOTUS pictures. In one picture, Breyer is smiling, and in another, Scalia is half-smiling, half-smirking. Alito and Thomas look like they’d rather be at the dentist. Overall, the effect is a bunch of people who really hate being on camera. (Of course, they do. They famously don’t allow cameras in the courtroom during oral arguments, while our top court streams arguments live.)

What is it that makes our appellate judges so much happier-looking than those on the high court? My pet theory: it’s harder to glower when you’re wearing a bright red robe with a floppy white tie.

Photo courtesy of USA Today.

I was driving on Charles Street by our office this morning when I saw a woman walking across the street with the help of a cane and what I thought was a full cast on her left leg. Upon closer inspection, I thought the woman was Phoebe Haddon, dean of the University of Maryland School of Law.

Turns out I was half right. The woman was in fact Haddon, but she was wearing a brace, not a cast, according to Jamie Smith, a law school spokesman. Haddon has been rehabbing from a summer leg injury, he said, and part of the treatment is to wear the brace.

Haddon is on her way to her goal, incidentally, of a full recovery by Saturday, when she will deliver her first address since becoming dean in July. Ron Kirk, the U.S. Trade Representative, will give the keynote address at the program, titled “Justice & the Global Economy”  but designated on the school’s Web site as “an event celebrating [Haddon's] appointment.” Registration for the event had to be closed after 500 people signed up, Smith said.

On the cover: With their progressive pilot potentially on the chopping block, the OPD’s Neighborhood Defenders in Park Heights are defending not only their clients but their problem-solving approach. Also, Caryn Tamber talks to University of Maryland law professor Danielle Citron about her research into online gender harassment and the law.

In the news: An EPA official says the agency wants more weapons in its arsenal; Maryland’s top court upholds a sex-abuse conviction based on the testimony of a 6-year-old victim; Mike’s Train House is sued for infringement; and an offshoot of the “driving while black” case will be the subject of a rare Court of Special Appeals en banc hearing.

 Also:

• Verdicts & Settlements features the case of an HIV-positive teacher who was fired from his job at a private elementary school in Arnold.

• Before there was “The Power of Nice” or his success as a sports agent, there was the Modern Bar Review Course. In My First/Business, Ron Shapiro reflects on the lessons learned from his initial foray into commerce.

• In Opinion/Commentary, Jack L.B. Gohn weighs in on the narrowing difference between blogs and journalism, while Edward J. Levin points out a key requirement under a Maryland deed of trust: naming an individual as the trustee. 

• Catch up with our Week in Review and the Law Digest, this week with cases from the Maryland Court of Appeals, Court of Special Appeals and the Office of Administrative Hearings.

Before two federal environmental lawyers talked about recent government victories during Friday’s ABA section meeting, Bruce Gelber discussed a recent government loss in the Supreme Court involving Superfund sites.

In May, the high court ruled Shell Oil Co. was not liable as a party that arranged to dispose of hazardous materials under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act at a contaminated California site.

Gelber, chief of the Justice Department’s Environmental Enforcement Section, said the ruling will not impact many other Superfund cases due to an “atypical fact pattern, including the contaminant not being waste or byproduct.”

“The rumor of CERCLA’s demise has been greatly exaggerated,” he said. 

 The high court also upheld a ruling that apportioned liability to another company connected to the groundwater contamination. Gelber said the government does not dispute the divisibility rule, only its application here.

The goverment will continue to resist divisibility in Superfund cases where it believes the harm is “not theoretically apportioned,” he said.

Gelber concluded with some advice for the private practice lawyers in the audience.

“Tell your clients to create a paper trail that shows you undertook some steps to show how dangerous it can be to handle your material,” he said.

Both of Maryland’s law schools are located on campuses that are among the most dangerous in the country, according to a new ranking.

Both the University of Baltimore and the University of Maryland-Baltimore made The Daily Beast’s list of the 25 most dangerous colleges. In fact, UMB is the third most dangerous school in the country, according to this list. The rankings are based in part on crime data the schools are required to report to the federal government and in part on crime stats for the surrounding neighborhoods.

Maryland has the dubious distinction of having more schools on the list than any other state except Massachusetts. The other dangerous colleges in the Free State are University of Maryland-Eastern Shore and Bowie State University. Notably, the Johns Hopkins University is not on there.

No Maryland schools made The Daily Beast’s list of the 25 safest colleges.

Students at the “dangerous” Maryland schools: do the rankings ring true? Do you feel unsafe on campus?

(An aside: I’m proud that my alma mater didn’t make the list. To my dad, who was worried about me going there because of safety concerns: I told you so.)

HT: TaxProf Blog via Above the Law.   

As if Caryn Tamber’s article weren’t compelling enough, our sister paper in Richmond points out another reason to study Gomis v. Holder.

“If the 4th Circuit’s current configuration leaves it in equipoise and publishing even fewer opinions than usual, it is at least going on the record with some of its disputes,” Deborah Elkins writes on the Virginia Lawyers Weekly blog: 

In recent days, the court has published two orders in cases in which it has denied rehearing en banc, with judges at each end of the spectrum publishing concurrences and dissents from those denials.

True, the judges don’t always fall into predictable patterns.  But their airing of views on classic issues such as the degree of deference to agency decisions and the “sanctity of the home” may be a preview of coming attractions, after some of the court’s five vacant slots are filled.

The agency-deference case Elkins refers to is Gomis, in which the court voted 5-5 not to rehear an asylum case. July’s panel decision deferred, 2-1, to the BIA’s finding that an adult woman’s father was unlikely to make good on his vow to have her circumcised because, among other things, the practice was outlawed in Senegal in 1999 and the State Department reports it is on the wane there. 

The “sanctity of the home” case is Hunsberger v. Wood, decided Sept. 14 by a 5-4 vote with one abstention. The decision let stand a finding of qualified immunity for a police officer who made a warrantless entry to a home at night, accompanied by a civilian who was looking for his missing stepdaughter.

Chicago Bears middle linebacker Brian Urlacher’s football season ended in the first quarter of the first game of the year after he dislocated his wrist. Despite early rumors the injury was career-ending, various hand specialists say Urlacher should be able to play again next season.

His memorabilia company, however, is not so sure, which is why it terminated his $1.2 million contract in the days after Urlacher underwent surgery.

Now Urlacher is suing Dreams Inc. for breach of contract, seeking the remaining $600,000 on his four-year deal and any related damages.

The contract, signed in October 2007, was part of the court filings. Dreams ended its relationship with Urlacher based on a clause allowing the company to terminate the contract if he is out “for sixteen or more consecutive weeks” — a full season or more.

The contract is chock full of interesting items, including how much Urlacher’s signature is worth if he meets various on-field performance goals. If he is named Super Bowl MVP, for example, his price per autograph goes up to $100 (up $25 from his regular price) for the first 3,200 signatures and $80 a signature thereafter.

Urlacher was contractually obligated to sign thousands of items every year. I’m kind of surprised he injured his wrist on the field before he suffered carpal tunnel syndrome off it.

(HT to my colleague Steve Lash for telling me about the lawsuit.)

How many times have you, or your wife, taken photos of your kids playing in their bath? How often have you snapped a quick photo of your wife, or your husband, toweling off your children, or maybe showing the babies giggling while lying naked on the bathroom floor?

Well, if you’ve taken any of those pictures recently, don’t send them off to Wal-Mart to be developed. You might find yourself being labeled a child pornographer, your home ransacked by police, your name placed on a sex offender registry. You might lose your job. You might even lose your kids to foster care.

That’s what happened to A.J. and Lisa Demaree, a married couple from Peoria, Ariz. According to a story on the ABC News Web site, the Demarees sent a batch of 144 family photos to their local Wal-Mart to be developed. Eight of the photos were of their young daughters — at the time ages 18 months, 4 and 5 years old — playing in their bath, being toweled off, and lying naked and giggling on the bathroom floor. A Wal-Mart photo developer decided that those photos were pornographic and sent them to the police.

The couple’s lawyer told “Good Morning America” that a report issued by local authorities described the photos as “child erotica” and “sex exploitation.” He said the person responsible for the report was unqualified to make such judgments.

It took a year for the Demarees to get the matter straightened out — a judge threw the charges out of court — and it cost them $75,000 in legal bills. Now the Demarees are suing the city and the state for mislabeling them as child pornographers, and Wal-Mart for failing to tell them that the company had an “unsuitable print policy” and could turn over photos to law enforcement without their knowledge.

“I don’t understand it at all,” A.J. Demaree told “Good Morning America” Monday. “Ninety-nine percent of the families in America have these exact same photos.”

Wal-Mart defended its actions in a statement: “At Wal-Mart we’re committed to providing quality service and convenience to our photo customers. These are sensitive allegations and we’re taking them very seriously.”

Police and prosecutors also insist they did what they thought was appropriate.  “Perversion,” said the couple’s lawyer, “is in the eye of the viewer.”

What right did the authorities have to invade this couple’s home, confiscate their videos and computers, and put their children into foster care? It seems almost like a totalitarian society. Then again, why didn’t the Demarees use a digital camera? Then there would have been no incident, no investigation, no charges and no public furor over pictures that were never supposed to have been seen in public, anyway.

PAUL SAMUEL, Associate Editor

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, no corned beef for anybody.

Last week, I wrote a new restaurant replacing the Court Towers Deli across from Circuit Court in Towson had pushed back its opening one week, to Sept. 21.

Alas, it was not meant to be, as the Perring Place Express Deli is still not open. Walking past the deli the last two days, I’ve noticed a fridge fully stocked with Red Bull and a new soda dispenser. But the tables remain pushed in one corner and the space remains mostly dark as work continues inside.

Unlike last week, there is no sign on the front door now announcing a new opening date. Stay tuned.