On the Record

It’s fitting in a way that a building that used to house the poor and homeless will on Friday officially become the new location for Baltimore County Circuit Court’s visitation center. Because the center, run through the court’s Family Support Services office, has been an orphan of sorts since its inception 11 years ago.

Officially known as the Supervised Visitation and Monitored Exchange Program, the visitation center primarily is used to allow meetings between children and “high-risk parents,” as well as drop off and pick up children whose safety is not a concern despite an issue between the parents.

The center has never had its own space, only sharing county buildings, according to Mark Urbanik, coordinator of Family Support Services. It most recently had space on the east side and west side of the counties until funding losses made the arrangement unsustainable.

So the court went to the county and asked for a new space. The county chose a central location, Cockeysville and building, The Almshouse, which dates to 1873 but closed in 1930. It was most recently used by the Baltimore County Historical Society.

The center hosts 125, one-hour-long supervised visitation sessions a month, Urbanik said. “High-risk” parents could include those with a history of drug problems or who are considered a flight risk, he said. There are about 10 monitored exchanges each month, he added, in cases where one parent has a restraining order against the other, for example.

Its new second-floor home features a large “romper room” with toys, games and crafts for families, Urbanik said. Perhaps more importantly, the center has separate parking lots for parents to prevent any chance encounters.

Urbanik added there is also room for a possible expansion in the future.

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Happy Columbus Day. If you’re at work, like those of us at The Daily Record, here are some law links to check out. If you’re off today, get out there and enjoy the beautiful weather.

• Is the cost of supplying lawyers to defendants in bail hearings worth it? Page Croyder says it would require lawyers to be available 24-7 and cost taxpayers a boatload.
• Good news in the legal industry: Jobs are on the rise. The national economy may still be in the dumps, but law firms are adding employees.
• The former voice of Dora the Explorer is suing MTV and Viacom for forcing her to sign a contract without allowing a lawyer review it. The girl’s family claims she’s been underpaid by at least $2 million. Vamanos! We have to sue!
• D’oh! EEOC sues employer for disability discrimination based on obesity.
• One South Carolina family law firm says no kvetching — we’ll get to you when we can.
• Attorneys and judges are grappling with juror comments on Facebook. This might be deja vu for readers who followed the Dixon trial.
• Lawyers will fight death penalty with economic argument: It’s just too expensive (HT: How Appealing).

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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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Those expecting fireworks between Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler and Del. Don H. Dwyer Jr., R-Anne Arundel, when the two met before a House Judiciary Committee hearing Wednesday were sadly disappointed.

Dwyer, who said he plans to call for Gansler’s impeachment this month, extended his right hand and greeted the attorney general before the committee session. Gansler accepted the handshake and returned the greeting.

Gansler appeared before the House Judiciary Committee to testify in favor of a constitutional amendment to eliminate contested elections for circuit court judges. (Read all about it here.)

Dwyer, a member of the Judiciary Committee, wants to oust Gansler over the opinion he issued last month on same-sex marriage. The opinion supports Maryland’s recognition of same-sex marriages legally performed in other jurisdictions, even though such marriages are illegal here.

Dwyer says the opinion violates Gansler’s oath to uphold Maryland law, which defines marriage as the union between a man and a woman. Gansler counters that Maryland is required under the federal Constitution’s Full Faith and Credit Clause to accept legally binding contracts — including marriage contracts — from other states.

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You would have thought the lawyers were going through the divorce.

I’ve seen some heated courtroom exchanges, but nothing like what I saw during a contempt hearing Tuesday in Baltimore County Circuit Court.

The hearing stemmed from the divorce proceedings of Michael C. Hodes of Hodes, Pessin & Katz P.A. and his wife, Lois.

At issue was, of course, money — specifically, how much of it Mr. Hodes owes Mrs. Hodes at this point, based on a November 2008 marital settlement.

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Happy Monday!

• Dawn Bowie touts the use of “parent coordinators” in custody cases.
• If you (or, more precisely, Above the Law’s David Lat) eat the cookies from a hotel minibar, then replace them with the exact same cookies you bought down the street for less money, is that ethical?
• Is this good advice for gay big-firm lawyers on coming out?
• The federal government needs to stop letting the ABA accredit law schools and figure out how to control the number of lawyers flowing into a saturated market, a Washington lawyer writes. HT: Temporary Attorney.
• Check out legal humor blog Lowering the Bar’s nominees for lawsuit of the year, argument of the year, lawyer of the year and other “of the year”s. Lots of laughs here.

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Welcome back to everyone who was out of the office over the holidays, and Happy 2010! A variety of legal news clippings to smooth your way back to working a full week:

• First, 2009 is behind us, and according to numbers compiled by Law Shucks, when it comes to big law firm layoffs, that’s a good thing.
• Now that we’re in 2010, what kind of novel legal thinking can we expect to kick off the decade?
• What about suing your hospital because it wasn’t prepared for a Biblical-scale natural disaster? Now presenting a new litigation product, Medical Malpractice by Katrina! (HT: Overlawyered). Or what about highlighting the possible sociopathy of crime victims?
• Speaking of pathologies, I think John Mesirow at Legal Juice summed it up well when he wrote “it’s not often that an attorney gets busted for doing cocaine, in the courthouse, in the midst of a trial.” Here’s what happened.
• I don’t know who fared worse, the lawyer in the last bullet point (and his client!) or the lawyer who lost his Madoff investment…and then couldn’t share that loss with his ex-wife! (HT: Maryland Divorce Legal Crier).
• In more upbeat news, here’s a well-done and feel-good story about late U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist’s grandson, Peter, a walk-on to the basketball team at Boston College. (As a legal reporter who sometimes wishes he had walked on to his college basketball team, I got a double kick out of this one. HT: How Appealing)

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Happy Monday!

•  To put it mildly, fathers’ rights lawyer Dawn Bowie does not like the recent changes to Maryland’s domestic violence laws.
• “But if I wrote an editorial to the Miami Herald decrying the fact that Obama’s health care plan includes feeding small children to lions, would they publish that too?” Ron Miller sounds off about an anti-health care plan opinion column.
• Former congressman Dick Armey has left DLA Piper over backlash about his work to defeat the Democrats’ health care proposals.
• All together now: correlation does not imply causation! (States with a lot of lawyers also have a lot of cocaine use.)
• Break out the champagne: we went a whole week with no big firm layoffs.
• Don’t leave an employer off your resume!

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