Morgan State shooting victim files malpractice suit against MD law firm

A Morgan State University student who was one of the five people wounded in a 2023 on-campus shooting sued the Baltimore law firm that represented him in a since-dismissed civil lawsuit against the school.

Filed Thursday in Baltimore Circuit Court, the legal malpractice lawsuit seeks over $75,000 in damages from WGK Personal Injury Lawyers and attorney Mark Herman, who represented the student in his civil negligence claim against Maryland’s largest historically Black university.

Shot in the foot and arm during his first semester, the student is now represented by Michael S. Warshaw and Robert L. Hanley Jr. of Towson-based Royston, Mueller, McLean & Reid, LLP.

The new legal team argues Herman and his law firm failed to properly investigate the student’s negligence claim and didn’t properly respond to Morgan State’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit, which a judge ultimately granted in June 2025.

The malpractice complaint says Herman and WGK “did almost no due diligence or investigation” into the circumstances leading up to the shooting.

“Other than obtaining some damage related information, such as (the student’s) medical records, there is little other evidence of any investigation into the liability component of (the plaintiff’s) case,” the new complaint alleges.

The malpractice case came a day after one of the two men to face charges in the 2023 shooting was sentenced to 85 years in prison. Five people, including four Morgan State students, were hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries after gunfire broke out Oct. 3, 2023, during the school’s homecoming festivities. The mass shooting prompted the university to cancel remaining homecoming celebrations and invest in tighter security, with the school’s president even flirting with the idea of building a $6.4 million “security barrier”  around the campus in the aftermath.

The lawsuit against Herman and WGK notes that there had been shootings on campus during homecoming week the past two years, arguing the school did not bolster its security until after five people were shot in 2023. But the personal injury firm’s file for the case “reveals no investigation into prior shootings, prior similar claims,” or crime data reported by the university under the Clery Act.

Herman did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday. Neither did Mount Vernon-based WGK’s owner and managing attorney, Jill Kolodner. The firm was incorporated in 1977 by Kolodner’s father as William G. Kolodner, P.A.; it started using the WGK trade name after he retired.

The student’s new lawyers allege that his civil attorney instead filed a “scant” negligence complaint against the university and did not include “any specific factual allegations that would provide the foundation for Morgan State’s duty to prevent the incident in which (his client) was shot.”

The two-page complaint only contains a single “general and conclusory allegation that Morgan Sate failed to provide adequate security” that noted there were “the same problems with active shooters” during past homecoming events, the malpractice suit says.

Morgan State filed a motion to dismiss the negligence complaint, arguing it didn’t allege sufficient facts to establish that the school had a duty to prevent “the unforeseeable acts of a third party.” Herman didn’t seek to amend the complaint or discovery, instead filing an opposition brief that introduced new facts that were not in the complaint. Unable to consider those facts, the judge dismissed the case.

Herman filed a notice to appeal the judge’s decision but sent his client a letter withdrawing as counsel 40 days before appellate brief was due and did not attempt to find substitute counsel, according to the complaint.