Concern regarding “waste, fraud and abuse” in government spending is everywhere these days, it seems. Even in 2017, it is a solidly bi-partisan concern. A quick internet search reveals that think tanks from the progressive Center for American Progress to the libertarian Cato Institute have published on the topic, and…
Omni Imaging, LLC (“Omni”), a Maryland limited liability company, filed its lawsuit against our clients, Blue Ridge X-Ray Co., Inc. (“Blue Ridge”) and Richard A. Wilson, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, on or about October 12, 2016, alleging breach of contract, tortious interference with contract…
Businesses are obliged to ensure that their facilities comply with the Americans With Disabilities Act. But can anyone who believes he has found a violation somewhere sue to remedy it? The U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland recently considered what types of plaintiffs may initiate such litigation, and…
Long a consistent and ardent judicial champion of the constitutional protections afforded citizens under the Fourth and Sixth Amendments, one cannot help but wonder how Justice Scalia would have viewed the showdown between Apple and the Department of Justice. The DOJ and FBI intentionally selected a headline case to push…
The Court of Special Appeals of Maryland issued an opinion this week that serves as a reminder that a party’s simple failure to preserve evidence can sometimes snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. The case (and link) is Cumberland Insurance Group v. Delmarva Power. The short version of the…
It’s no secret that the Court of Special Appeals has been increasingly overwhelmed with cases, nor is it a secret that the Court would like to see a lot of these cases resolved or otherwise cleaned up before having to spend time on them. Those concerns led to the creation…
In its 2009 decision in Shenker v. Laureate Educ., Inc., 411 Md. 317, the Court of Appeals of Maryland inserted a caveat in the premise that shareholder lawsuits against corporate directors must be pursued as a derivative action on behalf of the corporation itself. By declaring that a corporation’s impending…
Have you obtained a judgment for recovery of money? Lucky you! Is that judgment unsecured? Ouch. Well, at least you have some protection should your opponent decide to appeal: Under the Maryland Rules (and unless the parties agree otherwise), the appellant has to file a supersedeas bond covering the whole…
Governments and businesses know – or at least they should – that there’s a difference between being vicariously liable and being directly negligent. Jurors may not, however, so how carefully should the distinction be explained come time for crafting jury questions? Perhaps not much – according to a new opinion…
We all know the little tricks to stuffing the most content into the allotted number of pages of your appellate brief (currently 50 for the Court of Appeals and 35 for the Court of Special Appeals) – decreasing the line spacing, decreasing the margins, decreasing the kerning, decreasing the height…
As the appellant in the Maryland appellate courts, when should you file your brief? Currently, it’s within 40 days after the clerk notifies you that the court has filed the record. Sounds easy enough, except the current Maryland Rules don’t actually require the clerk to send such a notice. In…
Maryland attorneys are eminently familiar with the State’s Local Government Tort Claims Act (LGTCA), which imposes a limitation on liability for the local government entity of $200,000 for each individual claim ($500,000 aggregate for claims that arise from the same occurrence). This limitation on liability operates to strictly limit damages…
Silverman|Thompson|Slutkin|White real estate litigation attorneys succeeded in obtaining summary judgment on behalf of the private owner of a project-based Section 8 housing project in a breach of lease action pending in the Circuit Court for Baltimore City. The case involved a determination of whether projects funded by the Department of…
Civil litigators know that the impending bankruptcy of an opponent is bad news for any lawsuit that’s ongoing or in the works: Bankruptcy operates as an automatic stay of any state-court litigation against the debtor until the bankruptcy gets resolved. Oddly, however, the precise effect of such a stay was…
The Maryland Insurance Administration, or the MIA, is charged with regulating the insurance industry in Maryland. Its responsibilities include issuing licenses to insurance professionals, developing policy, and drafting regulations. The MIA is also charged with investigating alleged violations of Maryland’s laws and regulations governing insurance. As part of this delegated…