On the Record

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.

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I wrote in November about a law change that resulted in hundreds of car salespeople not getting manufacturers’ incentives for their sales. Those connected with the law called it an unintended consequence that they promised to address as soon as possible when the General Assembly reconvened in January.

An amendment to the law is now Senate Bill 18, and a hearing will be held Jan. 21 before the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee. Aides to Sen. Jamie Raskin, D-Montgomery, the bill’s sponsor, are confident it will ultimately pass through both the Senate and House of Delegates with little problem.

You can see a copy of the proposed legislation here; the new law would allow manufacturers to directly give incentives to salespeople, but the incentives must be disclosed to the dealerships.

The dealer and manufacturer associations have signed off on the changes, according to Raskin’s office. Also supporting the bill is Honda, the only manufacturer not to adopt an interim solution to the incentive problem.

Stay tuned for more news next week following the hearing.

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The stereotypical sweet for cops is a doughnut, but that has changed in Maryland – at least until the New Year.

My colleague, Liz Farmer, passed along a press release from the state’s Mothers Against Drunk Driving chapter announcing its fourth annual “Cookies for Cops” campaign. From now through Dec. 31, thousands of cookies will be delivered to law enforcement agencies throughout the state, a sugary way of thanking officers for their work.

There were 152 drunk-driving fatalities in Maryland last year, down from 178 in 2007, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

You can visit MADD’s Web site if you’re interested in contributing to the cause. (And if you need people to test the cookies you bake, feel free to send them to our office.)

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Happy Monday!

• Ron Miller takes issue with The Ethicist’s advice to a doctor who doesn’t want to treat a medical malpractice lawyer.
• In the context of why most great blawgs aren’t written by big-law types, Carolyn Elefant has this to say: “Big firm lawyers are very, very good at practicing law, but I suspect that for many, their time spent at big law is just a job (albeit an intellectually stimulating, financially rewarding one), not their life’s work or a calling or a part of the legacy that that they want to leave behind. Let’s face it — without passion,  you can’t do much more than phone it in on a blog.”
• Be careful out there, readers: lawyers have a higher rate of car accidents than anyone but doctors.
• Ohio is set to execute a man using only a barbituate on Tuesday. The three-drug cocktail most states use for execution has drawn criticism for what some say is the potential for excruciating pain. HT: How Appealing.
• I would totally watch this show.

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I did not know The Pretenders had a song called “Brass in Pocket” until last week. Sure, I’d heard the song, where lead singer Chrissie Hynde vows to woo a gentleman using various body parts and inanimate objects. (I also remember the ’80s music video where Hynde plays a waitress.) 

But I learned the song title, naturally, from the latest opinion by Judge Glenn T. Harrell Jr. of the Court of Appeals. As my colleague Steve Lash reports in today’s paper, the case decided whether Harford County police unreasonably conducted a search-and-seizure of a car. Officers stopped the car in part because the driver, Garry Dennis Crosby Jr. was “slumped down” as he drove.

In his brief, Crosby said he was using a “Detroit Lean” while he was driving and pointed to a definition in Urban Dictionary: “driving with one hand on the wheel while slouched over to the right.”

Harrell, in a footnote, said an “independent endeavor to determine whether such a phenomenon exists” led to the Pretenders’ song, which he quoted:

Got motion, restrained emotion

I been driving, Detroit Leaning

No reason, just seems so pleasing

Gonna make you, make you, make you notice

“As the song predicts, Crosby’s ‘Detroit Leaning,’ if that is what he was doing, succeeded in getting him noticed,” Harrell concluded in his footnote.

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Quick - what’s the first thing that comes to mind when you see this proposed license plate?

For those of you with your minds in the gutter, it was actually Kelley Coffman-Lee’s attempt to announce her fondness for tofu. But the proposed vanity license plate could be interpreted as her fondness for… um… something else, which led the Colorado Deparment of Revenue to deny Coffman’s request last month.

Now comes word the state actually keeps a list of unacceptable letter combinations under a law allowing authorities to ban potential license plates that are “offensive to good taste or decency.” The list currently has close to 3,000 entries.

This does not sit well with the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado, which obtained the list and believes authorities are unjustly censoring residents. The organization now has a section on its Web site devoted to vanity license plates and teases a “Vanity Plate Game” will soon be added.

Sounds gr8 to me.

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Here’s a sentence from a press release issued by Baltimore County on Friday announcing that crime in the county was down in 2008 compared to 2007:

Most impressively, of the eight serious crime categories, seven have seen a decrease. Rape has decreased by 2 percent, robbery by 3.4 percent, aggravated assault by 10.7 percent, burglary by 9.8 percent, motor vehicle theft by 13.6 percent, and arson by 4.3 percent.

The release noted in an earlier paragraph homicide was down 16.7 percent, for those keeping count. But that still leaves one category that saw an increase and is not mentioned anywhere in the release.

According to police department data, that category is theft, which increased 5.7 percent between 2007 and 2008. Leading the surge is the theft of precious metals, specifically copper and catalytic converters, police spokesman Bill Toohey said. With copper, thieves typically enter homes under construction and take wiring; with catalytic converters, they swipe them right from cars. Catalytic converter thefts in the county, in fact, have increased from 50 in 2006 to 459 last year, Toohey said.

In both instances, the stolen goods are sold to scrap metal dealers, said Toohey. The Maryland Senate passed a bill last month that would require junk dealers and scrap metal processors to keep more detailed records of who they are buying goods from to help police catch the theives, but the companion bill in the House of Delegates did not make it out of committee.

Click here for the county’s crime summary. Overall, crime decreased 1.2 percent in 2008 compared to 2007.

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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.

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There’s no doubt that times are tough for American auto dealers.

Nevertheless, GM is moving forward (and generating some buzz) with Stolen Vehicle Slowdown – their new OnStar technology.

It basically works like this: When a GM car is stolen, the victim calls OnStar for assistance. OnStar reps then use real-time GPS technology to locate the stolen vehicle and report it to law enforcement. Once the vehicle is found by police, they request OnStar slow down the stolen vehicle remotely by reducing engine power.

OnStar had representatives at the Laurel Park Race Track yesterday and allowed reporters to get a sneak peak of the technology inside a “stolen” Chevy Tahoe.

As you will see in the video below, we were not on the actual racetrack; we were in the parking lot outside. Still, I marveled at how quickly OnStar was able to remotely slow the vehicle we were driving.

See for yourself and watch the video below.

RICHARD SIMON, Multimedia Reporter

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In case you missed it, Hagerty Insurance Agency (a Michigan vintage automotive insurance company) released the results of a survey highlighting the top 10 most “questionable” car designs.

Its customers were apparently none too fond of the now-defunct AMC stable of vehicles, which had three vehicles on the list.

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