When Baltimore attorneys Thomas J.S. Waxter III and Brian S. Brown called for Fran Meek on Thursday evening, the city circuit court’s longtime civil assignment supervisor asked, perhaps understandably, “I’m in trouble again?”

After 40 years of fielding calls from litigators and matching their cases with judges, Fran might have expected an 11th-hour postponement request or news that a settlement had fallen through.

But not on this night.

Waxter, Brown and dozens of other local attorneys, judges and courthouse staff had gathered in the second-floor lobby of the Clarence M. Mitchell Jr. Courthouse to celebrate Fran’s retirement. They were calling for the modest 62-year-old, described as a “pillar of this courthouse” and a “study in grace,” to stand before her fans and accept their praise (and a gift in a white envelope, courtesy of several local law firms).

Brown, a lead-paint plaintiff attorney whose cases are a staple of the court’s civil docket, thanked Fran for “dealing with stressed-out lawyers like me.” W. Michel Pierson, the judge-in-charge of the civil division, presented her with a plaque that recognized her four decades of service on North Calvert Street. Then it was Fran’s turn to speak.

Surprising no one, she insisted her job hadn’t been as difficult as people made it sound.

“It really isn’t,” she said, “because we all work together, and you make it easy.”

“C’mon, Fran!” a naysayer shouted jokingly from the back of the crowd.

Indeed, several attendees said it was Fran who made it easy for them, even as she juggled all the demands and personalities at the downtown courthouse.

“I could always call 410-333-3750 and know Fran would help me,” said Towson attorney Gerard P. Uehlinger.

“She was never flustered,” Retired Baltimore City Circuit Judge Clifton J. Gordy said. “In this chaos, sometimes that’s hard to imagine.”

Baltimore City Circuit Administrative Judge Marcella Holland remembered how Fran, whose last day was about a month ago, understood the busy judge didn’t have much time to hear cases between all of her meetings.

“So she dubbed the phrase, ‘Judge, can you take a shorty?’” Holland said with a laugh.

Well, Fran, after years of guiding many, including this reporter, through the wilds of the circuit court, it seems you’ve earned the right to some time for yourself (and your family). May it be a longy!

One would think that in this darkest, coldest time of the year Baltimore’s public officials would welcome the warmth of a little sunshine. But in this reporter’s recent experience, it seems they’d rather shut the doors to keep out the elements. All metaphorically speaking, of course.

Exhibit A: The Yakov Shapiro case. City officials have maintained that it was never their idea to keep quiet the mistaken-identity arrest of an innocent Soviet-born violin teacher or the legal settlement they reached with him. On the other hand, The Daily Record nearly had to sue the city to get the story, and official explanations for the unprecedentedly confidential resolution of litigation have been wanting.

Exhibit B: The police commissioner’s silence regarding the cost to taxpayers of alleged police misconduct. Anyone who monitors the Baltimore Board of Estimates’ weekly agenda knows that the city’s spending panel is regularly — at least monthly — asked to approve the settlement of a lawsuit alleging police mistakes or brutality.

At a time when municipal money shortages have led to cuts in city services and mandatory furloughs, it would seem reasonable to ask the man in charge of these allegedly misbehaving officers about the millions of dollars they are costing taxpayers. But as you can see in the video inset, neither he nor his spokesman think so.

Read the rest of this entry »

Keith Merryman

While Baltimore City Solicitor George A. Nilson and Steven Kupferberg, the attorney for mistakenly arrested violinist Yakov Shapiro, still differ as to the origin of the confidentiality of their settlement, allow me to offer a few updates related to the case.

There’s been a strong reader reaction to the story of Shapiro’s travail — which started when a detective investigating claims of child molestation by Yisroel Shapiro posted a warrant for Yakov Shapiro — and the city’s efforts to keep it quiet. While many Baltimore elected officials have kept to themselves about the questions the case raises about government transparency and training at the police department, a few city council members have spoken up:

• Baltimore City Councilwoman Belinda Conaway, who has taken an interest in the costs of police negligence, said last summer she understood the need for such a confidential settlement “under extraordinary circumstances, once in a blue moon.” But, she said, “this should not happen again anytime soon.” Last week, after finally hearing the details of the Shapiro case, her first reaction was “Oh my God.”

“It’s a terrible, terrible thing to happen and I would hope the necessary steps are taken so something like this doesn’t happen again,” she said. “A settlement is nice but there’s no way that that settlement can undo the damage that was done.”

• Conaway’s colleague to the North, Bill Henry,  who had his own bout with transparency earlier this year, suggested a policy change. (City Councilwoman Mary Pat Clarke had the same idea this summer when asked about the settlement of the Shapiro case, which was then still shrouded in secrecy.)

“If we could all walk away from this with one lesson learned, I would hope that it would be a shared recognition of the importance of transparency in government proceedings,” Henry wrote in an e-mail Wednesday evening. “Perhaps the Board of Estimates needs to develop a better policy of how to deal with confidentiality concerns when allocating City funds. Perhaps we should be trying to record and broadcast not only the actual Board of Estimates proceedings, but the mini-meetings ahead of time when more detailed briefings are given for many of the issues before the Board.

“The Administration has claimed to be supportive of this initiative of the Council President’s (recording and broadcasting B/E meetings, Liquor Board hearings, and BMZA hearings),” Henry continued, “but also claims to be unable to come up with the operating funds needed – less than $50K – leading to the reasonable suspicion that they must be sufficiently comfortable with the status quo.”

Mr. Kupferberg has shielded Yakov Shapiro from press inquiries but he described his client’s reaction to the stories published in yesterday’s paper.

“Yakov was in here today, and I asked him if he wanted to speak to you and he started to cry,” Kupferberg said by phone from his office. “I showed him the story, and he just teared up.”

One detail I wasn’t able to determine before we published Tuesday evening was the identity of the judge who presided over Shapiro’s bail review that November morning three years ago. Well, it seems the voice on the recording was that of C. Yvonne Holt-Stone. According to an e-mail from Baltimore City District Court Administrative Judge John R. Hargrove Jr., Judge Holt-Stone was on the schedule for that morning at Central Booking, where Hargrove says Shapiro’s bail review took place. Holt-Stone, who has been on the city district court bench since 1991 is on leave through the end of the year and could not be reached to confirm her part in the case.

The other person I’ve yet to hear from is Baltimore City Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III. He was at the White House yesterday and is out of the office through Christmas, according to his spokesman.

I’m less optimistic about ever hearing from Detective Keith Merryman (who posted the warrant for Yakov Shapiro instead of the real offender, Yisroel Shapiro) or police lawyer Neal M. Janey Jr., who negotiated the settlement, but stay tuned on those fronts.

Artist's court sketch of Yisroel Shapiro (left, with glasses and Kippah)

Finally, if you’re interested in learning more about Yisroel Shapiro and how his misdeeds came to light in the generally close-knit and tight-lipped Orthodox Jewish community, have a look at Standing Silent, a documentary that will premier at the Atlanta Jewish Film Festival in February. Phil Jacobs, the executive editor of the Baltimore Jewish Times who has covered the topic extensively, stars in the film.

Thanks for reading and Happy Holidays!

A month and a half ago I wrote about the addition of a young but high-profile lawyer to the Maryland U.S. Attorney’s office, Leo J. Wise.

When U.S. Attorney Rod Rosenstein told me Wise, who policed Congressional ethics for the past couple of years, would prosecute white-collar crime as an AUSA, the bribery case against state Sen. Ulysses Currie (D-Prince George’s) and a pair of Shoppers Food executives immediately came to mind.

Well, Wise entered his appearance in Maryland’s federal court for the first time this week, and, sure enough, one of the two (sets of) cases on his personal docket is the Currie-Shoppers prosecution.

Presumably, no one will disassemble the U.S. Attorney’s office (as certain members of Congress reportedly have suggested re: the OCE) before trial in the case next summer…

Of course, Rosenstein’s office’s other major political corruption prosecution (and ongoing investigation) also involves Prince George’s County, and there was attorney news in that cluster of cases, too, this week.

In case you’ve been asleep for the past month, County Executive Jack B. Johnson and his wife, Leslie, were arrested Nov. 12 after the FBI overheard the couple scrambling to hide nearly $80,000 in cash and a check for $100,000 in, um, various places.

Prominent defense attorney William R. “Billy” Martin, who has defended people like Michael Vick and the mayor of Atlanta, seemed an appropriate person to represent Jack Johnson, but few had heard of Leslie Johnson’s counsel, Owings Mills attorney Roland N. Patterson Jr.

Apparently the county councilwoman-elect decided she needed a little more heft to protect her from federal prosecutors because this week a big-firm attorney, whose office is in the Watergate building no less, entered her appearance on behalf of Mrs. Johnson. Perhaps not coincidentally, Shawn M. Wright is a partner at Martin’s old firm, Blank Rome LLP.

So, dear readers, do you think these these personnel moves will significantly impact the evolution and outcome of these cases or were these politicos’ looking at jail time regardless of any clever attorney’s maneuvering?

Everyone agrees the Baltimore City Circuit Court buildings are “absolutely terrible” and that a new courthouse is in order, the city’s administrative judge declared at a meeting of city and state criminal justice officials last fall.

To this end, the city and its circuit court ponied up between $600,000 and $700,000 for a Maryland Stadium Authority-picked consultant to study the upgrade possibilities.

At that same September 2009 Baltimore City Criminal Justice Coordinating Council meeting, the representative from Los Angeles-based consultancy AECOM Inc. promised a final report with recommendations by this past spring.

In January, MSA spokeswoman Jan Hardesty offered assurances of that schedule.

“It’s on course, it’s on schedule,” Hardesty said. “It should be out in early spring.”

When nothing came out by June, I spoke with Judge Marcella Holland, the city’s administrative judge, who told me the study’s publication date was more likely to be late summer. When it still wasn’t out by late September, I asked again after its progress. The latest update came Friday from MSA Project Executive Gary A. McGuigan, who acknowledged the delay but said such an important matter should not be rushed.

“It’s still going to be a little bit,” he said. “My best guess right now is it’s probably going to be the end of the year.

“It’s very complicated. It’s a very large report, and we want to make sure we get this thing right,” McGuigan explained. “It’s taken longer than I had hoped, but like I said, we want to get this thing right.”

So, given that it’s already been several years that litigants, lawyers, judges, courthouse employees and members of the public have had to deal with a decaying — if still stately in some ways — pair of courthouses, and it won’t be several more years (or, God forbid, decades) until the problem is properly solved, what’s another year or so (and a half million dollars) more spent putting a plan together?

Baltimore County businessman Jack W. Stollof was sentenced to a year and a day of home detention in May for his role in a years-long, multimillion-dollar tax sale bid-rigging scheme.

Perhaps the only reason Stollof, who reportedly drove around in his Jaguar to check up on the properties he’d bought, didn’t receive a prison term like co-defendant and fellow septuagenarian Harvey M. Nusbaum, a lawyer, is because he has a heart condition, as well as a history of bladder cancer and meningitis, and the presiding federal judge decided he was too fragile to survive a year in the clink.

Apparently encouraged by U.S. District Judge J. Frederick Motz’s clemency, Stollof, through his attorneys, has made several attempts to modify the terms of his home confinement. Hey, why not?

Read the rest of this entry »

When I heard last night that Baltimore City Circuit Chief Judge John N. Prevas had died from a heart attack apparently suffered while at the downtown courthouse, I thought, among other things, of a passage in a recent City Paper cover story written by one of Prevas’ former law clerks.

Hal Riedl’s story was about a repeat violent offender Prevas had sentenced in 1987, who recently went away again for a sex offense. In bringing the reader into the present day after recounting the history, Riedl wrote these unfortunately prescient lines about his former boss:

“His health has been poor for years, and I’m trying to persuade him to retire. I know very well that won’t happen — one day he’ll simply keel over in court.”

I’m working on Prevas’ obituary today and I hope to speak to Riedl, who I first met while we watched the Sheila Dixon trial together and most recently saw at Gregg Bernstein’s post-election press conference. Others with memories of Judge Prevas are welcome to call me at 443-524-8156 or leave them in the comments section of this blog.

As the The Daily Record’s city courts reporter, I’m quite familiar with the rigors (and failings) of courthouse security. I’ve had to empty my pockets and remove my belt countless times and, occasionally, I’ve had to run back to the office or to my car to drop off whatever prohibited electronic device I happened to be carrying. So I understand the hassle. But hassle isn’t usually grounds for a successful federal civil rights lawsuit, as a federal judge reminded an aggrieved Prince Frederick man earlier this month.

According to Harold Hodge Jr.’s suit, the trouble began on April 9 when he attempted to enter the Calvert County government building that hosts the district court. A guard manning the metal detector told Hodge to remove his belt and leave his cell phone outside. Hodge protested, citing the 1968 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Terry v. Ohio, but eventually complied with both requests. A similar series of events played out on several other occasions at the district court building and at the circuit court nearby before Hodge eventually filed suit on Aug. 30.

Read the rest of this entry »

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.

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.

Read the rest of this entry »