Baltimore faced a major budget crisis earlier this year, leading to dire threats of spending cuts and revenue-raising measures, some of which were eventually implemented. The mayor threatened to close rec centers and fire houses, ground the police helicopter, and reduce other municipal services. Eventually, there were layoffs, pension cuts for police and fire fighters (which have led to federal litigation), and increased taxes.

But more than pension obligations contributed to the city’s money problems, and one contributing factor — maybe small but maybe larger than we’d like to believe — is plain from my story in today’s paper: simple but expensive mistakes.

To cut to the chase, some city employee forgot to punctually withdraw from a bank account more than a million dollars the city was owed by a Fells Point developer, forcing the city to sue the developer, which eventually resulted in a $400,000 settlement.

That’s right, $600,000 of taxpayer money went instead to developer Larry Silverstein because somebody was asleep at the switch. Silverstein, whose Union Wharf LLC was the party in the case, and his Union Box Co. have successfully repurposed several old buildings in the Fells Point area. He’s not the richest Larry Silverstein I know of, but I doubt he needs a windfall, and Baltimore can’t afford to give money away to anyone, much less a wealthy developer. (Note: I’m not alleging corruption here, merely an expensive mistake.)

Silverstein has not returned messages left yesterday and today seeking comment, and the city law department hasn’t been able to tell me who messed up. I also haven’t heard from several members of the City Council I asked about the approval of today’s settlement.

And while police misconduct, which also costs the city millions, is a different matter, the police also make mistakes that end up costing the city a tidy total. One particular example springs to mind.

While a couple hundred thousand dollars here and there doesn’t close a $121 million budget gap, eventually hundreds of thousands become millions, and millions pile up, too.

Allow me one turn at the “what would that money have bought?” game.

Remember when the city almost had to close several public pools in the heat of August because it couldn’t afford to keep them open and were saved at the 11th hour by a flood of private donations?

Yea, much of that grandstanding with city children as the pawns might have been avoided if the city had simply gone to the bank on time to withdraw the $1 million from Union Wharf’s account.

Last week, I read an Above the Law post that really got my blood boiling. A North Carolina man was sentenced to just 120 days in prison after he shot a bicyclist in the head during a roadside confrontation — in front of the rider’s three-year-old daughter.

The ATL blog referred readers to the full Alt Transport article, aptly titled, “Want to Get Away With Murder? Just Run Over A Bicyclist.” Using the North Carolina case, along with a couple unaddressed hit-and-runs, to illustrate his point, the author argued for nationwide laws to command justice for cyclists and other “vulnerable road users” who are injured or killed by motorists.

Fast forward to one week later: A Howard County man who hit and killed a teenage boy last August pled guilty Tuesday to driving while impaired during the incident. Police said he had heroin in his pocket and failed a field sobriety test after he struck the cyclist. The punishment for taking a child from his family? Six months in the clink.

I am sick to death of motorists getting a slap on the wrist when they significantly and fundamentally alter the lives of cyclists — and the lives of their surviving family members. In the Howard County case, their son’s death caused both parents to lose their jobs, leading to foreclosure and, for the mother, a personal bankruptcy filing, according to The Baltimore Sun.

It’s not as if this sort of tragedy is an anomaly. In fact, accidents involving bicycles have become so commonplace that one D.C. website reports the number of cyclists struck each week in the district. There were six — reported — just last week. Anecdotally, having had the conversation with bike commuters in various cities, I have not personally spoken to anyone who rides more than recreationally and has not been hit or at least clipped by a vehicle.

I don’t mean to vilify all drivers. Yes, there are plenty of motorists out there who give cyclists a wide berth on the road, just like there are plenty of bike riders who wait at every stop light and plenty of pedestrians who never jaywalk. But the next time you’re barreling down the street in a two-ton piece of metal and come upon a cyclist, remember that you’re sharing the road with someone who, unlike you, doesn’t have the added protection of a steel exoskeleton.

There’s alternative billing, as my colleague Danielle Ulman wrote about in Monday’s paper, and then there just might be Glenn C. Lewis’ alleged billing practices.

Lewis had days with as many as 71 billable hours, and in a 16-month period in 2003 and 2004, he billed clients for “3,620 hours, or an average of 226 hours per month, or 7.4 hours a day, 365 days per year,” according to a story in Sunday’s Washington Post.

Lewis told the Post the 71 hours in a day billing was “block billing,” where he entered his hours for many days at once, and that he works night and weekends.

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Well, it looks like fall has arrived. Here are some law links to ease you into this rainy Monday.

• If Washington’s law firm revenues are any indication of how regional firms are doing, it’s a mixed bag.
• President Obama still can’t get his judicial nominees confirmed.
• We told you a couple weeks ago about a South Carolina lawyer who was admonished by the state’s Supreme Court for having sex with a client’s wife. The Maryland Lawyer Blog points out that in South Carolina, the admonishment came without mention of the lawyer’s name, but, try that in Maryland, and the Court of Appeals will be pointing fingers, and naming names.
• No more excuses for poor voir dire prep. Just use your laptop.
• Was Stephen Colbert’s appearance before a House committee in character pointed or pointless? Readers of Concurring Opinions disagree with the blog.
• The Supreme Court will start its session next week with tests on free speech.
• British copyright infringement firm’s files hacked.

If you didn’t dig deep into Friday’s print edition or weren’t able to scale our website’s subscriber wall, you might’ve missed pretty big news in the local legal and media world yesterday: a $350,000 defamation verdict against the Baltimore City Paper.

Briefly, the story is that a federal court jury found Van Smith, a veteran journalist who’s covered Baltimore interestingly and well for years, defamed Miami restaurateur Ioannis Kafouros in a pair of articles two years ago by suggesting the Florida man was Ioannis “Crazy John” Kafouros, a Baltimore hustler who was convicted of trafficking in stolen goods before skipping town in 1999.

That’s right, the reporter said some guy was a federal fugitive when he wasn’t one. Yikes.

The City Paper ran corrections, of course, but the damage had been done. And so it seemed the non-fugitive Mr. Kafouros had a pretty solid case against Baltimore’s alt-weekly. While the amount of the award was surprisingly high, I don’t think anyone was shocked the jury awarded damages. I’m not a lawyer, but I’m told falsely stating someone is a criminal is defamation per se –- or, to borrow a phrase from the plaintiff Kafouros’ attorney, “that’s all she wrote.”

So that’s the first point: the jury got it right by finding negligence. The City Paper screwed up, as it has admitted, and this is the final proof of that.

But that said, having covered the trial, I think what happened in this case was an honest mistake – costly, but honest.

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The state Board of Elections’ vote totals are still listed as “unofficial.” But a week out from election day, I think I can report the results of the contested judicial elections primaries without fear of a “Dewey Defeats Truman” situation.

There were three contested judicial races in the state, with sitting judges in other jurisdictions running unopposed. In Cecil County, Judge V. Michael Whelan defeated challengers Harry D. Barnes and John H. Buck, while all four sitting judges in Baltimore County – Jan Alexander, Sherrie Bailey, Ann Brobst and John Nagle III – cruised to victory over challenger T. Scott Beckman.

The race was much closer in Anne Arundel County, however. Challenger Alison Asti finished second in the Republican primary and missed out on second in the Democratic primary by just 500 votes (out of 56,000 cast) in her bid to unseat either Judge Laura Kiessling or Judge Ron Jarashow.

A state election board official said the top two finishers in each primary move forward to November’s general election. That means all three candidates’ names will appear on the ballot in alphabetical order. (Kiessling, who won both primaries, will only be on the ballot once.) The two top vote-getters will receive a 15-year term on the circuit court bench.

Monday’s Maryland Lawyer cover story is about a controversy surrounding the paved parking lot of The Oregon Grille. One thing I could not fit into the story is a bit of the history and significance of the restaurant’s building, which adds some context to the legal dispute.

The Oregon Grille occupies the last company store in use in Baltimore County, according to Ruth Mascari, who sits on the board of directors for the Baltimore County Historical Trust. The store dates back to at least 1846, when county records note storekeeper C.J. Rosan had an inventory worth $1,200, according to the Baltimore County Public Library’s archives.

The nearby Oregon Furnace started up three years later. It was destroyed by fire in 1853, but ore mining continued at the site for another 30 years, according to John McGrain, a former county planner and historian who has written about the county’s manufacturing villages.

Thomas Kurtz, Oregon’s last foreman, then bought the entire 457-acre tract and continued operating the general store, according to McGrain.

The property remained in the Kurtz family until the county purchased it in 1969 and created Oregon Ridge Park.

Back to work already? Here are some law links to get your day going.

• Why buy the book when you can get this Supreme Court history run down for free?
• Does Tyson Meats refuse to hire women workers? The U.S. Labor Department thinks so.
• How a University of Minnesota law student became the go-to guy for analysis of the divorce proceedings of Dodgers owners Frank and Jamie McCourt.
• Will Justice Breyer step up as the leader of the liberal bloc?
• Curious about what you might make as an in-house lawyer? Law Shucks is compiling data from readers.
• One reason why Rush Limbaugh should not rely on Wikipedia.

U.S. News & World Report’s Best Law Firms list is out, and with the way it took shape, it got me wondering: Is it better to make the list but land in the third tier, or not make it at all?

The much-anticipated rankings break down the top firms by 81 practice areas, but instead of numerically ranking them, U.S. News tiered firms nationally and in metropolitan areas. Potential clients can search for a firm based on location and practice area.

The tiered structure makes the list much more inclusive than a typical top 100 list ever could, and it allows firms that land in the top tier to call themselves just that — tops at what they do, rather than, say, a quarter of the way down the list.

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… Because they sure didn’t vote at lunch time.

“As of the 1 o’clock numbers, we had 6 percent of the voters coming out, which is 22,660,” Abigail Jones, administrative officer at Baltimore City Board of Elections, told reporter Brendan Kearney.

Jones said the turnout was “scattered” and wasn’t heavy in any particular part of Baltimore.

“It’s quiet all over the city,” Jones said. She attributed the low turnout to both the lack of a presidential contest and the number of incumbents running unopposed this year.

Checking back at 3 o’clock, we found turnout had risen –  to 8 percent.

Meanwhile, Brendan continues to cover the Baltimore City State’s Attorney’s race. Look for his updates on The Daily Record’s website tonight.