Baltimore lawyer alleges baseless criminal charges forced him to sell his firm

A Baltimore lawyer sued the city and three police officers last week for false arrest and malicious prosecution, alleging that the baseless charges ruined his career and forced him to sell his firm.

Joshua L. Greenberg sued Baltimore City and three police officers in Maryland federal court on Feb. 19, alleging that he was charged based on an officer’s false statement — later recanted under oath — that he pointed a gun at them.

Greenberg, 51, was charged with assault, reckless endangerment, and use of a firearm in the commission of a felony, among other charges, for a February 2023 incident at his home in Baltimore’s Bolton Hill neighborhood.

All 13 charges were dropped five months later, “but not before inflicting irreversible harm,” the complaint states.

The three officers named in the complaint are Megan Deaton, Latora Craig and Krystal Cooper.

Greenberg’s then-wife had obtained a protective order against him while they were in the process of divorcing. His complaint states he had no notice of the protective order. The woman had been staying at her mother’s house, but came to the house in Bolton Hill in the middle of the night to grab formula and bottles for their 13-month-old baby.

She had a police escort and arrived around 2 a.m. The police car was allegedly not running and had its lights turned off. She knocked, rang the doorbell and opened the front door, but didn’t have a key to the second door in the vestibule. It took several minutes for Greenberg to wake up and come downstairs.

As Greenberg used the flashlight on his phone to see down the steps, one of the officers said “gun,” and the group retreated out of view with their guns drawn. Greenberg looked around outside, saw nothing, closed the front door and went back to sleep.

The next morning, he was arrested. Overnight, one of the officers obtained an arrest warrant alleging that he had pointed a gun at them and then “barricaded” himself in his home.

At a hearing related to the protective order in March, Deaton took back the statement that he pointed a gun at them.

The judge’s findings of fact stated that Greenberg was allowed to have one in his home, but “there was no imminent threat that he was pointing it at anyone or going to harm anyone with that gun.”

Allen Honick, who represents Greenberg, said the court was only asked if he was pointing a gun — not whether he was holding one.

He was detained pretrial for more than a month, then sent to home detention. Police did not amend or rescind the arrest warrant that based charges on Greenberg pointing a gun at them.

The Baltimore Police Department declined to comment, and a spokesperson for Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott did not respond.

“Mr. Greenberg’s business and professional reputation were irreversibly ruined by the Defendants’ conduct and have never recovered,” the complaint states.

He was forced to sell his business for “pennies on the dollar to ensure that his existing clients received the necessary and time-sensitive legal counsel they, and the ethics rules, required.”

“While some clients indicated that they could tolerate a brief interruption to Mr. Greenberg’s services, the prolonged pendency of the baseless felony charges … caused catastrophic and irreversible loss to the business, as clients and partners could not abide the ongoing uncertainty and reputational stain from the pending criminal charges.”

Greenberg, a consumer finance lawyer, is back to work, but his practice is much smaller than before. Honick said he had a “huge operation” representing institutional lenders in dozens of states, and it was “trending vertically.”

Key to the lawsuit is the allegation that the officers’ conduct was not a one-off error. The complaint notes that at least 10 similar lawsuits for false affidavits and arrests have been filed and settled since 2016, resulting in payments of over $50 million. The complaint cited the 2016 U.S. Department of Justice report on the BPD, which found a pattern or practice of invalid warrants and false arrests without discipline.

“These systematic municipal failures were the moving force behind Mr. Greenberg’s injuries,” the complaint states.

“This isn’t one rogue officer,” Honick said. “This is not one case standing alone in isolation.”