The Maryland Terrapins’ women’s lacrosse team won the national championship Memorial Day weekend, beating Northwestern University 13-11. The victory clinched the Terps’ record 10th title and broke the Wildcats’ five-year run as champions.

Now, I can’t say I’m a big fan of women’s lacrosse. But I am a proud Maryland alum, and I’ll always pull for the sports teams.

So I was surprised when I read earlier this week that Northwestern had sent a “letter of inquiry” to the NCAA alleging official shenanigans (literally) aided Maryland’s victory. Northwestern claims that a veteran referee, Pat Dillon, talked with the championship game officiating crew prior to the final. The problem, according to NU, is that Dillon’s longtime partner, Sandy Worth, is Maryland’s head athletic trainer.

According to the NCAA, Dillon mentioned her Maryland connections on a disclosure form, which means she cannot work any Terps games.

But Dillon, a Hall of Fame referee, was part of the crew that officiated Northwestern’s victory in the semifinals, an assignment NU had unsuccessfully asked the NCAA to remove her from.

My first reaction was two words: Sore. Losers. But then I imagined the shoe on the other paw, so to speak: if Dillion was in a relationship with someone connected to the Northwestern team, I imagine Maryland’s athletic department would be just as upset.

While I doubt a Hall of Fame referee would try to unduly influence her colleagues moments before the biggest game of the year, as NU alleges, it seems the general point about conflict of interest merits further investigation.

I guess that’s a question that will have to be addressed for next season – when the Terps will be defending their championship.

My cover story in Monday’s Maryland Lawyer about the Sunnyside church talks about state law governing corporate and property rights of religious entities. There was one question I could not answer before my deadline: where did this 1976 law come from?

(Unfortunately, there is no quick link to the statute. If you want to see it, click here, then “Maryland Code”, “Corporations and Associations,” “Title 5. Special Types of Corporations,” “Subtitle 3. “Religious Corporations.”)

I had heard that former Gov. Marvin Mandel testified in the General Assembly on the law’s history this past session. Mandel told me Monday the same thing he told the House Committee about the law.

“I still think it’s unconstitutional,” he said. “The state shouldn’t get involved in religion.”

Yet it was Mandel who introduced the legislation at the request of the Episcopal Church, which was having an “internal battle over its assets.” He said he made his reservations about the bill known, but ultimately signed it into law because the factions had decided the bill was best the way to solve the problem. (For what it’s worth, Mandel is Jewish.)

The Sunnyside case is the first time in 35 years legislators looked at a law Mandel thought would have been long gone from the books by now.

“No one’s questioned it up until this time,” he said. “I was surprised no one stepped forward and contested it.”

The former governor added that he would be keeping an eye on the Sunnyside case as it makes its way through the courts.

A gloomy day like today feels closer to winter than summer. But warmer days are ahead and, as Frederick Rasmussen points out in his always-entertaining Sunday Sun column, we’re days away from Straw Hat Day.

It seems Baltimore men of a bygone era took out their straw hats May 15, unofficially marking the start of summer the way a Memorial Day weekend traffic jam on the Bay Bridge does today.

“In those days it was the mandatory finishing touch for a man when dressing,” said Eddie Jacobs of the eponymous men’s clothing store. (As far as I know we are not related.)

Jacobs also noted that “June 1 to Sept. 1 was seersucker and cotton season.”

Rasmussen has more:

After an eight-month slumber, out from hat boxes and darkened closets emerged jaunty straw boaters, sometimes called butcher’s, sailor’s or skimmers, and Panamas, with their center crease and thin black band that circled the hat’s crown.

In turn, they became the crowning touch for the lightweight Palm Beach, linen and seersucker suits that men wore in an attempt to deal with Baltimore’s infernal heat.

Loyal readers know exactly where I’m going with this. Be on the lookout!

Maryland Lawyers for the Arts is marking its 25th anniversary with a “Conference on Creativity & Law” tomorrow afternoon at the American Visionary Art Museum. The conference is free and open to non-lawyers, but you need to RSVP here.

Marcia Semmes, MLA’s executive director (pictured left), called it a “do-it-your-self copyright event,” featuring discussions on copyright law and a screening of “Copyright Criminals,” a documentary about music sampling that will be followed by a talk from filmmaker Kembrew McLeod.

“We think all of the pieces are there for an interesting afternoon,” Semmes said.

That MLA is celebrating its 25th birthday is an interesting story in itself. The organization existed in name only by the late 1990s until it re-launched in 2006. Two years later, MLA started “Arts Brief,” a quarterly e-newsletter that now has more than 10,000 subscribers. Semmes said she received a call from an artist in Washington State this week asking if Saturday’s conference will be available online. (It won’t, she added, but future events might.)

Semmes said MLA still wants to increase its reach beyond the Baltimore region, where most of its volunteers and artists reside. It will also be planning an event this fall to formally celebrate 25 years.

“We face the same challenges as any non-profit, but, knock on wood, we’re as stable as we’ve ever been,” she said.

During my days in College Park, I accumulated a pile of free Terps T-shirts that I would wear to football and basketball games. Some may have been a little big, and roughly 5,000 other students would be wearing the exact same shirt, but hey, they were free.

I say this because we all probably did something similarly resourceful while in school to save a few bucks. Two recent stories about law school students have reinforced my point.

First is Julia Neyman, a student at Columbia Law School. Neyman has a blog, the cleverly-titled “Buns of Steal,” in which she chronicles her attempt to work out at health clubs in New York City for an entire year without paying once.

Neyman found gym memberships too expensive upon moving to New York to start law school but soon noticed gyms around the city gave out free passes and coupons. Enter her blog and her goal.

“Most people aren’t cheap enough to do this for a whole year,” she told The New York Daily News. “But I am.”

Next is University of Baltimore School of Law student Burke Miller, who posted an ad on Craigslist seeking tickets to Wednesday night’s Duke-Maryland basketball game in exchange for providing a certain number of billable hours to the seller upon passing the bar.

Miller told The Baltimore Sun one ticket seller contacted him but declined the offer.

“I’m still hopeful,” he said. “I’d sit down with [a seller] and make a contract and look at the standard billable rate for a young attorney. I’ve got full faith that I’d be a good attorney.”

I wish them both the best. (Incidentally, I’d be willing to part with some of my Terps T-shirts for a ticket to the game.)

I mentioned in my story in Wednesday’s paper a letter written by the Board of Visitors at the University of Maryland School of Law concerning former Dean Karen H. Rothenberg and the recent audit of the University of Maryland, Baltimore.

Here is the letter in entirety. The board’s chairman, Paul D. Bekman, said the seven judges and one elected official (Sen. Ben Cardin) who are members were ethically precluded from endorsing the letter because of their positions. Otherwise, the letter represents the board’s unanimous position.

I wrote in today’s paper about the third lawsuit filed against Scott D. Shellenberger in his role as Baltimore County State’s Attorney.

That begs the question: What are the other two lawsuits? Glad you asked. The first one, filed in April 2008, came from a prisoner in Cumberland seeking to waive a filing fee prepayment, a request that was promptly denied.

The other one, filed last May, remains open and could have widespread ramifications. An Arbutus distributor of gaming devices has asked a judge to declare pull tab gaming machines legal in Baltimore County.  Acme Amusements argues the machines are not slots in part because the element of chance comes from the pull tabs, not the machine containing them.

“The machines at issue in this case do not read the pull tabs or any tickets electronically, do not alert the user to a winning or losing ticket and do not tabulate a player’s winnings or losses,” the company states. “As such, they fall outside the definition of ‘slot machines’ and are not illegal devices.”

The company cites the Court of Appeals’ Chesapeake Amusement decision in 2001 to explain why it proceeded with its declaratory judgment action. The defendant in that underlying case was the Calvert County State’s Attorney.

Tim Maloney, Acme’s lawyer, said he expects lawyers from the Office of the Attorney General to argue the case during a hearing scheduled for April.

Parade Magazine had an interesting notebook item recently about jury duty. (And no, unfortunately, Howard Huge didn’t jump into a jury box thinking it was some sort of play space.)

The story reports many jurisdictions are experiencing an increase in the number of people “who say they can’t afford to serve or who simply don’t show up, causing cases to be delayed or even dismissed.”

The problem has been exacerbated by the recession; a Minnesota plumber was found in contempt of court and jailed for a day in November after saying during voir dire that he couldn’t afford to miss more than a day of work. “I don’t get paid when I’m not working,” he said, according to court records. “I could see myself just going with the flow to get it over with to get back to work.”

The American Tort Reform Association has proposed states pay jurors more, noting Arizona offers jurors $300 per day for trials lasting longer than five days.  By comparison, jurors in Maryland are paid between $15 and $30 per day depending on the jurisdiction.

So, what say you – is a larger per diem the best way to ensure citizens answer the call of jury duty? What else could be done to make the experience more palatable for potential jurors?

Has it really been more than seven months since I’ve noted the annotations in the opinions of Court of Appeals Judge Glenn T. Harrell Jr.?

Sadly, it has.

I’ve been checking periodically since May, of course, but honestly I haven’t been as diligent as I should have been. (Anyone else smell a New Year’s resolution here?) So I did a quick review of the judge’s opinions since I last wrote about them. And while I didn’t see too many Harry Potter references, two opinions stood out.

Harrell referred to a zoning dispute between Baltimore City residents and a neighboring apartment complex as “the city’s version of the Hundred Years’ War” in a July opinion. Not only does Harrell give a brief description of the Hundred Years’ War in a footnote, he includes this gem:

The Hundred Years’ War gave history Joan of Arc. The instant case also has a central figure named Joan (one of the Petitioners), who, like her saintly antecedent, faithfully presses her cause, having battled the Mayor and City Council of Baltimore numerous times. Although Joan of Arc suffered an unfortunate fate, her principals… ultimately succeeded.

One month later, Harrell went from the historical to the philosophical. He began a majority opinion holding the state can regulate noise from a shooting club in Allegany County with a question: “If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” Harrell notes many attribute the question to 18th century Irish philosopher George Berkeley.

The judge then partially answers the question. “An existentialist likely would decline to confront the riddle because human impact expressly is excluded by the query,” he writes. His footnote offers a crash course in existentialism:

Most existentialists treat the human subject as the starting point for philosophical thought. Thus, this riddle likely would be deemed by them to be too abstract and remote from the concrete human experience to be worthy of serious contemplation.

In other words, the opposite of Harrell’s opinions.

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.)