Before today, I had never heard of Romanian sculptor Constantin Brancusi nor his fantastic facial hair. It turns out in 1923 he made a bronze scuplture, “Bird in Space,” that he shipped to the United States in 1927. Customs officials levied a $4,000 tax on it upon arrival because it was, in their view, a hunk of metal. Brancusi said it was art, which was not taxed at all. He took his case to court and won in 1928, his money refunded.

I learned all this thanks to the winner of video contest sponsored by Maryland Lawyers for the Arts in honor of the organization’s 25th birthday.

The three local filmmakers–David Sloan, Thea Canlas and Matthew Hickey–swept the $500 grand prize and $250 audience award. You can see the video below – its title, “Left-Brained People Helping Right-Brained People,” is a riff on MLA’s motto. The short also alludes to other, famous artistic legal battles, including the fair use case of Rogers v. Koons.

“We were initially a little worried that our idea would incite the wrath of two groups that tend to take themselves very seriously—artists and lawyers—but it is that very seriousness that makes the piece work as a parody,” Sloan said, according to a press release from MLA.

What began as being too lazy to shave while on vacation last week has morphed into my first deliberate attempt at facial hair.

My goatee will be gone by the weekend, when I have to be in pictures for a family wedding, but for now it’s growing on me. (Ha!)

Whether I sport a goatee in the future will largely depend on what a future Mrs. Jacobs thinks of it. But then I read about Head and Shoulders insuring the flowing locks of Pittsburgh Steelers safety Troy Polamalu for $1 million.

Read the rest of this entry »

Let me start by saying I went to The Senator last night simply to see, for free, a classic film I’d never watched all the way through and to check out what I thought would be a neat event. I didn’t go as a reporter; I didn’t bring a notebook; I didn’t interview former Senator owner Tom Kiefaber (who I’ve actually never spoken to, only read about), and didn’t intend on writing anything until after the whole evening unfolded. Rather, I went dressed in shorts and sneakers with some old family friends and got there only a few minutes before the festivities kicked off, lucky to snag one of the few remaining unclaimed seats in the auditorium.

All disclosures and caveats aside, the point is I’m glad I went because how many opportunities do you get to watch Obi-Wan duel Darth Vader for the first time while simultaneously taking part in a memorable episode of Baltimore history?

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Last time I wrote about Southwest Video, the Halethorpe business was closed even after the county Board of Appeals ruled it was improperly shut down by county officials. Southwest did eventually reopen – only to be shut down last week once again by county officials.

Meg Ferguson, the county hearing officer, ordered the business closed July 1 until it removed all of its “viewing booths and video display devices.” Ferguson also fined Southwest $13,200 on top of the $50,800 she fined the business in the spring for operating an adult entertainment business in a prohibited commercial zone.

Mike Mohler, deputy director of the county permitting office, said he and colleagues would be returning to Southwest today to make sure the video booths had been removed.

Howard Schulman, Southwest’s lawyer, called the closing illegal, alluding to his earlier, successful argument that a court order and the accompanying due process are necessary to shut the business down.

“The county unfortunately has resorted to illegal methods to enforce what it says is the law,” he said.

Schulman said Southwest is considering its legal options, one of which is to sue the county for damages in order to “decide the matter once and for all in a judicial setting.” (Southwest has filed two mandamus-related lawsuits against the county stemming from the zoning and code enforcement actions.)

All of this comes as the Baltimore County Council approved Tuesday more restrictive zoning laws for adult entertainment businesses. Among other changes, stores with adult content that exceeds 15 percent of the total inventory would be classified as adult entertainment businesses and must be located in manufacturing zones. That’s down from the 20-percent threshold but more than the 5-percent figure proposed in response to Halethorpe residents’ complaints about Southwest during a council session in May.

Schulman, who skimmed the legislation when I called him, said it seemed “too broad in terms of its scope and reach.”

On this Take Your Child to Work Day, I remember the time in August 2008 when my daughter — a fan of the televison show Law & Order — tagged along as I covered a double-murder trial in Montgomery County.

I told her not to expect there to be a lead male prosecutor and a female assistant sitting “second chair,” a staple of the long-running NBC show. 

I also warned her that gruesome pictures of the crime scene would not be introduced into evidence, as occurs often on the program. After all – as I was told in law school – the prejudicial effect of such photographs on the defendant outweighs their probative value for the jury.

But when we entered the courtroom, there was Montgomery County State’s Attorney John J. McCarthy at the prosecution table sitting with his female assistant, Kathy Knight. And during the trial, the prosecutors successfully introduced into evidence bloody pictures from the 2002 slayings of Gregory Russell, 47, and his 9-year-old daughter Erika Smith at the father’s Silver Spring home.

My credibility now destroyed, what happened next was only fitting.

During a break in the trial, McCarthy came over and introduced himself to my daughter. She politely responded, “Hello, Mr. McCoy.”

[For those of you who may have been in a coma for the past 16 years, or without a TV, the chief prosecutor on Law & Order is Jack McCoy, played by Sam Waterston.]

As for the trial, defendant Anthony Q. Kelly was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison.

For extra credit, name the movie that co-starred Waterston and someone who was famously acquitted of a double murder. The answer is here.

The University of Maryland School of Law soon might be able to add “location for an Academy Award-winning film” to its promotional materials.

“The Response,” written by alum Sig Libowitz and filmed at the school in February 2008, is one of 10 films in the running for Best Live Action Short.

The 30-minute movie is based on the Guantanamo Bay tribunals and follows a trio of military judge advocate generals as they decide on a detainee’s guilt or innocence. The law school has an executive producer credit.

The shortlist will be pared down to no more than five next month, and the nominees will be announced Feb. 2. The Academy Awards will air March 7.

Washington lawyer Edward McNally grew up with the late movie director John Hughes in the Chicago suburbs — and had 27 days off his final semester of high school — but says he is not the real-life Ferris Bueller.

At the same time, McNally admits the “Ferris-ian high jinks were the everyday stuff of our boyhood lives” in an essay from Wednesday’s Washington Post. And McNally also says he’s drawn on the “Tao of Ferris” throughout his legal career:

In my service as a federal prosecutor and as a defense attorney, one key lesson from Ferris is his repeated message to his despondent buddy Cameron. Your current situation doesn’t have to be your fate. There’s always another way.

My favorite part of McNally’s touching tribute is his final anecdote. Let’s just say Ferris would have been proud - and Abe Froman might have had reason to complain.

I’ll admit, what made me click on the link in this blog post was the line:”This reminds me of the brilliant Scooner [sic] Tuna solution at the end of Mr. Mom.”

My love of Mr. Mom aside, I was intrigued when I was directed to LexisNexis’s “Lend a Hand” program Web site. Recently laid-off attorneys — from firms with 50 or more lawyers — can sign up for the program and receive free six-month profiles on Lawyers.com and martindale.com along with six months of free access to Martindale-Hubbell Connected and the Martindale-Hubbell Career Center.

That’s almost as good a deal as receiving fifty cents off your can of tuna.

Hat tip: Above the Law.

OK, this post may get a tad convoluted, so please bear with me.

Yesterday I got an email from the listserv at Ram’s Head Live, the downtown Baltimore concert venue where I’ve seen two concerts in the last month, advertising a newly-announced show by indie-pop star Santigold. Now, the reason this caught my eye — I’m not a huge fan of her brand of punk-meets-reggae-meets-hip-hop-remix style — is because until a few months ago, the singer was known as Santogold with an “O.” This is important because 2008 was a break-out year for Santogold. She toured in support of British supergroup Coldplay, her album made influential music website Pitchfork.com’s Top 50 “best of” list, and her songs were remixed  by big-name DJs.

So I did some googling in search of an explanation, and ended up lost in a weird world of infomercials, space aliens, fake rock stars, and ’80s pro wrestling movies shot inside the Baltimore Civic Center (now 1st Mariner Arena).

Let me explain. Read the rest of this entry »

Above the Law reports that Entertainment Weekly has put out a list of 15 TV and movie attorneys they would hire. Really now, there’s got to be more than one lone female on-screen attorney (and the one they do have on there is the clueless Ally McBeal, whom EW.com admits is a “neurotic mess” — argh) who could make the list.

Or maybe not. In this review of the 2002 movie High Crimes, the author writes that female lawyers in the movies have been “a complete disaster. They have been unethical, incompetent, over-emotional, messed up people with horrible judgment and no personal life.”

Anyone out there have a favorite on-screen lawyer, or one who makes your blood boil?

CARYN TAMBER, Legal Affairs Writer