What effect will the Supreme Court’s ruling on drug-label warnings, Wyeth v. Levine, have in the state’s trial courts? While it will undoubtedly move cases forward, lawyers in Maryland don’t expect a flood of new litigation. As one noted, “There hasn’t been this huge holding back” by trial lawyers here.

MICPEL, already struggling with the economy, faces a new hurdle: replacing its longtime executive director, Brent Burry, who will return to his native South Carolina next month.

In other news:

• Med-mal defense litigators at Whiteford, Taylor & Preston will be leaving for Hodes, Pessin & Katz in the coming weeks;
• The top court dismissed Bar Counsel’s action against a Tydings partner who billed the firm for the fair market value of flights he purchased with frequent-flier miles;
• Bankruptcy lawyers continue to switch firms — and some have formed a new Annapolis boutique firm;
• Investors suing golf-course developer Neal Trabich haled both him and his former attorney into court in a discovery dispute. (The judge found no fault with the “experienced, highly talented and widely respected” Andrew Radding, but withheld judgment on Trabich); and
• The new U.S. Attorney General, Eric H. Holder Jr., was in Baltimore on Friday to address the National District Attorneys Association’s board of directors.

In Verdicts and Settlements, a former tenant was awarded $10,000 in attorneys’ fees for defending against retaliatory back-rent suits by her landlord. (Also, see this story about the settlement of a suit between rival car dealerships.)

Three years out of school, Alicia N. Ritchie may be a young lawyer, but she’s already an old hand at pro bono representation.

In Opinion/Commentary, Our Editorial Advisory Board looks at the shadow banking industry, while DLA Piper’s Jack Machen outlines what’s right and what’s wrong with Baltimore’s green-building ordinance.

PLUS: On the Move, Briefs/Week in Review and our weekly Law Digest of cases from the Maryland appellate courts and the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

With declining markets and law-firm layoffs in the news, soon-to-be lawyers are wondering about their own job prospects, Caryn Tamber writes. Prospects are looking up, though, for two civil servants who were fired after campaigning for their newly elected boss’s opponent. The Court of Appeals said the workers should not have been booted out of court on summary judgment motions.

In other news:

• The top court reprimanded a long-time lawyer who was “up to the elbows” in work when he received an inquiry from Bar Counsel;
• An engagement letter with one lawyer capped the fees the firm could later charge for work by any of its lawyers;
• A jury rejected claims of abuse at a centuries-old treatment center for disturbed children, but awarded the plaintiff $239,000 for his broken hip from a slip-and-fall;
• The Court of Appeals considered whether a defendant was denied his right to an attorney of his choice when the lawyer he thought he had hired sent his law partner to represent him at trial; and
• Stevenson University’s new mock-trial courtroom made its debut with more bells and whistles than many real courtrooms enjoy.

In Verdicts and Settlements, a jury awarded $300,000 to an Essex woman who was the victim of a botched carpal tunnel syndrome release surgery in September 2004. And in Profiles in Leadership, Brendan Kearney checks in with Stephen J. Nolan, now serving a one-year term as chairman of the American Lung Association.

Read Jim Astrachan’s Legal ADvice column (print only),  Of Service by Joe Surkiewicz; Judge on the Jury by Judge Dennis M. Sweeney, and a letter to the editor.

PLUS — News briefs, On the move, and our Law Digest, this week with 15 cases from the Maryland Court of Appeals and Special Appeals, the Supreme Court and 4th Circuit, and the U.S. District Court.

When the Court of Appeals suspended (PDF) lemon-law attorneys Craig Kimmel and Robert Silverman last week, the big question was whether the Maryland office of their firm, Kimmel & Silverman, could operate during their suspension. Kimmel and Silverman, whose firm is based in Pennsylvania, are each admitted to practice in three states, but neither is admitted in Maryland. Their office here, in Baltimore County, has been staffed by Maryland lawyers working under the Kimmel & Silverman name.

The suspension won’t go into effect for several weeks, and 90 days after it does, Kimmel and Silverman will have the right to reapply.

I called Bar Counsel Mel Hirshman yesterday (he was out of the office last week and unavailable to talk) and asked him if Kimmel & Silverman could keep its Maryland office during the suspension.

“I don’t think so,” he said. “Not, at least, under that name.”

I’ve asked a spokesman for the firm for his comment. I’ll provide an update, either by blog or story, on what happens next.

CARYN TAMBER, Legal Affairs Writer

Information on federal judicial misconduct sanctions will soon be as close as your computer, according to our sister blog, DC Dicta.

Under new rules approved this week by the U.S. Judicial Conference, sanctions will be posted online and will identify the federal judge involved by name.

Information about complaints that are dismissed will remain confidential, but the new rules (PDF) allow the USJC’s Committee on Judicial Conduct and Disability to review such dismissals to determine whether special investigating committees should be appointed.

The rules come in response to a 2006 report by a special committee chaired by Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer that identified problems with some judges’ handling of high-profile complaints against their colleagues, DC Dicta says.

Breyer praised the new rules in a statement, calling their implementation “a very good thing” for the federal courts and those who use them.

Now, you might think Maryland must be way ahead of the feds on this point. After all, the Web site for the state’s Attorney Grievance Commission prominently posts the names and offenses of sanctioned lawyers, with big, boldly marked links for 2006, 2007 and this year’s ongoing count.

But does the Maryland Commission on Judicial Disabilities follows suit for sanctioned state judges? No; at least, not anywhere that I could find online.

True, people choose their lawyers, not their judges. But why have two different standards for online disclosure?

BARBARA GRZINCIC, Managing Editor/Law

UPDATE: Gary J. Kolb, executive director of the Maryland Commission on Judicial Disabilities, says a new Web site is in the works, pending the commission’s vote on March 24. “I’ve been pushing for this for a long time,” Kolb says. If approved, the new site will be “more accessible and more useful” than the current one-page fact sheet, with a downloadable complaint form, a Q&A section, a copy of the ethics rules and annual reports with statistics on claims handled by the commission, among other information. Will it include public sanctions for individual judges, though? “Not this first version,” Kolb says, but he’s working on it.

The University of Maryland’s Capital News Service has a couple of interesting stories on what we here like to call “Lawyers Behaving Badly,” a.k.a. Attorney Grievance Commission actions. (Come on, you know you like this stuff. Attorney malfeasance stories are consistently among the most read on our Web site.)

Writer Anju Kaur looked at discipline records and found that the number of attorney reprimands issued since private sanctions were banned does not equal the number issued back when they could be kept private. Kaur also looked at what sorts of behavior can get you disbarred in Maryland. (Hint: microwaving your divorce client’s estranged wife’s cat won’t do it.)

Ever see an AGC case where you think the Court of Appeals made a mistake in determining the sanction? Do you think more lawyers ought to be disciplined? Or is the AGC already bringing charges against too many?

CARYN TAMBER, Legal Affairs Writer