On the Record

Daily Record legal affairs reporter Danielle Ulman did some live blogging from the Defending Childhood Task Force at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law.

11:45 a.m.

A panel on the consequences for youth and society exposed to daily violence hit hard on some areas that might be ineffective in helping kids to turn things around.

Patrick McCarthy, president and CEO of the Annie E. Casey Foundation said he finds institutions for juvenile delinquents wholly ineffective. Many youths come out of these programs with worse behavior than when they started, he said.

Sonja Sohn, an actress most famous for her work on The Wire, also started the ReWired for Change outreach program to rehabilitate at-risk youth involved in criminal activity. She told her very personal story of abuse.

Sohn’s mother was abused by her father — once Sohn witnessed her father put her mother’s head on a chopping block in their kitchen and threaten her with a knife. She said she had daydreams about killing her father, and at one time considered running away at the age of 10 to be a prostitute in New York.

But Sohn’s story is one of rehabilitation. She said her family has learned to heal from the past abuse, and her father has gotten help.

Also on the panel was student Nigel Cox, chair of the national youth board of Students Against Violence Everywhere. Cox, who is a senior in high school in North Carolina, said he tries to preach the word nonviolence.

10:25 a.m.

We’ve heard from some victims of sexual and physical abuse and while their stories are hard to hear, they are important. Both women who spoke mentioned that by speaking out they are breaking the cycle of violence, which is exactly what the task force is hoping to do.

Rosa Almond, who was physically abused by her husband (and sexually abused by her grandfather at the age of 7), finally had the courage to leave and press charges when her husband beat her in front of her children.

Jacquelynn Kuhn was abused by a neighbor when she was just five years old. Kuhn explained that the teenager who molested her was a master manipulator, and told her that if she told on him, he would do worse things to her brother and sister. Kuhn only told her parents about the abuse as an adult, after she divorced an abusive husband.

Earl El-Amin, resident imam of the Muslim Community Cultural Center of Baltimore spoke about the rise of community violence in town. He attributes a lot of the problems to what he calls the “absent daddy club.” El-Amin says “If you don’t see a man, you can’t be a man.”

9:45 a.m.

Frightening stat: Baltimore children are 8 times as likely to die from homicide than other children in the country.

Joe Torre just opened up to the group about his experiences as a child with abuse. He never was personally abused, but he watched his mom get abused by his father, who was a police officer. Torre said he kept it to himself because he was embarrassed by it and thought he was the only one experiencing it. Now, Torre says children need to know that violence should not be a secret.

There are some very interesting voices on the task force, including Sarah Deer, an assistant professor at the William Mitchell  College of Law, who is focused on violence on Indian Reservations. According to Deer, reservations have the highest rate of violent crime in the nation.

Then there’s The Rev. Gregory Boyle, who runs Homeboy Industries in L.A., helping gang members from rival gangs to work side by side. Another interesting stat: his group offers 10,000 laser tattoo removals to gang members each year.

Attorney General Eric Holder has called the work of protecting children from violence “a priority” for his department, which has lots of other weighty issues on its plate.

Other big names on the roster for today are  Joe Torre, co-chair of the Safe at Home Foundation. The foundation’s Margaret’s Place is a tribute to Torre’s mother, which provides children with a safe place to talk to each other and counselors trained in domestic violence intervention.

The Wire’s Sonja Sohn (who played Detective Kima Greggs) will also be speaking today.

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Happy Thanksgiving week. Here’s a little taste of what’s going on in the legal world in this shortened work week.

• This one’s a doozy: A Georgia woman has been arrested for administering illegal silicone injections into the hips and rear ends of strippers. The FDA began its probe into Kimberly Smedley’s work after a Baltimore stripper became ill following the injections.
• On the injection front, here’s another story of an arrest made after a “doctor” used a mix of super glue, cement, oil and tire sealant to enhance a woman’s backside.
• Defendants win their fourth victory in four months under the Fourth Amendment in the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals. Now to find a four-leaf clover…
• Maryland and D.C. lag in reporting mental health records to gun-check databases.
• A Louisiana court has affirmed a ruling that citizens can make DUI arrests. (I’d love to see one of those arrests go down.)
• It could take 21 years to sell all of Maryland’s foreclosed homes.
• Add this to Wesley Snipes’ debts: American Express says he owes them $29,300. Snipes is serving a three-year sentence for tax evasion.

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Welcome back to work on this sunny Monday. Check out the links below to brighten your day.

• University of Maryland School of Law students are proposing stronger measures to protect children who are bullied in schools.
• For couples who can’t agree, getting a divorce in Maryland is easier now.
• DLA Piper’s Frank Burch has denied reports that his firm is set to merge with Canadian firm Fraser Milner Casgrain. Earlier this year, Burch told The Daily Record that DLA planned to make a move into the great white north.
• Prince George’s County had the most civil trials in Maryland last year.
• Former Penn State football coach Joe Paterno has hired a D.C. lawyer, King & Spalding’s J. Sedwick Sollers III, to represent him in the child sex abuse scandal that erupted last week in the wake of former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky’s arrest. Paterno is not charged with any criminal wrongdoing in the case.
• A North Carolina lawyer is bugging out over sharing an Air Tran Airways flight with some cockroaches.

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Mock trial has long been a staple of many Maryland high schools; I’m sure some of you reading this are now recalling the “cases” you argued lo these many years ago.

But this weekend, high school students from across the state are going from trial court to appellate court during the inaugural Maryland Invitational Moot Court Tournament on Saturday at the University of Baltimore School of Law.

Teams of students from seven schools are competing: Bishop Walsh (Cumberland), Friends, Owings Mills, Park, Potomac, Severn and Walter Johnson (Bethesda). They will argue before a number of state circuit and appellate court judges; retired Court of Appeals Judge Alan Wilner and Court of Special Appeals Judge Shirley Watts are scheduled to preside over the final.

“Mock trial offers a greater opportunity for those whose strengths lie in the presentation of material,” said Chris Lambert, the mock trial coach at Owings Mills and an event organizer. “In moot court, you might stress analytical qualities more.”

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It’s a sleepy Monday morning following the Ravens’ late-night win last night, but we’ve still managed to round up some interesting law tidbits for you below.

• Do nursing home lawsuits solve the problem of abuse and negligent care?
• A look at who is using Legal Aid these days.
• U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings is not pleased with a New York foreclosure law firm that held a pretty tasteless Halloween party last year where its employees dressed up as homeless people. The  New York Times published pictures last week.
• Kelvin Sewell, a former Baltimore homicide detective hopped the pond to visit Glasgow, Scotland to compare crime levels there with ours in Charm City. (HT: Baltimore Crime)
• Study finds media distorts the public’s perception on jury awards. (Turns out we only like to publish the big ones.)
• Oh, good. A law firm hires a consultant, learns it (the law firm) discriminates against women but decides not to change its system.
• 11th Circuit tells Cubans to get to the party on their own.

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The folks over at Hodes, Pessin & Katz like to get into the Halloween spirit every year with a pumpkin decorating contest.

This year, the firm’s litigation associates decided it would be a hoot to decorate pumpkins in the litigation partners’ likenesses with a litigation partner pumpkin patch.

What followed can only be described as revenge. When partner Patricia McHugh Lambert found out, she created an associate patch of her own, and the associates were not pleased.

Per associate Alex Moylan: “This is an annual tradition at HPK and we wanted to do something creative because our clients really enjoy seeing the pumpkins each year. We maintain the position that the revenge pumpkins submitted by the partners should not be considered, as they were submitted beyond the contest deadline.”

Take that, partners.

Litigation partners: Back row, left to right: Mairi Pat Maguire, Brian S. Goodman, Steven A. Allen. Front row, left to right: Natalie Magdeburger, Barry Bach, Patricia McHugh Lambert and Catherine Steiner

Litigation associates, left to right: Kimberly Longford, Alexandra Moylan and Kimya Behbahani

Photos courtesy of Hodes, Pessin & Katz P.A.

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Happy Halloween! Here’s a few legal items to chew on until the trick or treatees arrive.

• Former Van Halen lead singer Sammy Hagar may have revealed too much.

• Federal prosecutors oppose delay in the “Fatal Vision” case.

• Will the victim be blamed in Dodgertown?

• Billionaires, with barristers, battle in Britain.

• Power Rangers protect (intellectual) property.

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The family of an inmate who was killed aboard a prison bus was awarded $18.5 million and a Baltimore police detective is being sued by the family of a man he shot in 2009. Those stories and more in this week’s legal affairs top 5.

1. O’Malley gets nominees for Court of Special Appeals – by Steve Lash

The Appellate Judicial Nominating Commission on Wednesday sent Gov. Martin O’Malley the names of five candidates for the Court of Special Appeals vacancy created in January, when Judge Ellen L. Hollander joined the U.S. District Court in Baltimore. The nominees are:

* Andrew H. Baida, a partner at Rosenberg|Martin|Greenberg LLP in Baltimore. Baida teaches appellate advocacy at the state’s two law schools and writes a column, “The Art of Appellate Advocacy,” for The Daily Record.

2. Provision immunizing landlords from lead-paint liability unconstitutional – by Steve Lash

In a victory for lead-poisoning victims, Maryland’s top court Monday unanimously struck down as unconstitutional a statutory provision that immunized landlords from liability if they registered their property with the state environmental agency and offered payments of $17,000 to children at risk of lead poisoning.

The Court of Appeals, in its 7-0 decision, called the immunity provision and $17,000 offer “totally inadequate and unreasonable” to remedy the harm done to children permanently brain damaged due to their ingestion of lead-based paint in a rental property.

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Apparently, law school admissions folks are pretty nosy.

A survey from  Kaplan Test Prep found that 41 percent of law school admissions officers use Google to dig up dirt on applicants. That’s compared to 27 percent of their business school counterparts and 20 percent of people handling undergraduate college admissions.

Beyond Google, 37 percent of admissions folks deciding whether a student is worthy of entering their law school also check up on applicants through Facebook or other social media sites (hint: that’s where those privacy controls come in handy.)

Even worse is that when completing these searches, admissions staff find more damaging details about applicants to law school than they do for applicants to any other type of educational institution, such as business school or undergrad.

Best to clean up your digital trail, dear applicants. At a minimum, make your social media accounts accessible to friends, otherwise that high LSAT score might not cancel out photos of you doing (insert absurd/illegal action here).

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