The Shots Heard Round Richmond
Richmond, Virginia. Formerly, the home of the largest slave-trading center in the Upper South and the capital of the Confederacy during the American Civil War. Currently, the site of protests against police brutality and racial injustice, with activists removing or refacing Confederate monuments. The Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit recently said: “As a country, we are in a moment of reckoning.” See United States v. Curry, No. 18-4233 (Decided: July 15, 2020, Amended: July 16, 2020) (Gregory, C.J., concurring at 38).
United States v. Curry is a case stemming from the suspicionless stop of a pedestrian by the Richmond Police Department less than one minute after multiple gunshots were fired in a high crime area of Richmond. It is a fascinating opinion for a myriad of reasons. Read More…
MSBA Supreme Court panel will be online on July 27
By Steve Klepper (Twitter: @MDAppeal)
A highlight of the year for the MSBA Appellate Practice Committee is the annual Supreme Court Term in Review panel in Ocean City. Although COVID canceled this year’s MSBA Legal Summit, I’m pleased to report that the panel will be moving online. The registration link is here.
We have a terrific all-#AppellateTwitter lineup, with Jaime Santos (@Jaime_ASantos), partner with Goodwin’s Appellate Litigation practice, and co-host of the Strict Scrutiny podcast (@StrictScrutiny_); Lindsay Harrison (@LinzCHarrison), partner with Jenner & Block’s Appellate & Supreme Court group; and Amir Ali (@theamirali), Deputy Director of the Supreme Court and Appellate Program at the MacArthur Justice Center, and director of the Criminal Justice Appellate Clinic at Harvard Law School.
The event will be Monday, July 27, at 10:00 a.m. CLE credit is available, and the event is $29 for MSBA members and $59 for non-MSBA members
July 2020 Maryland Certiorari Grants
By Steve Klepper (Twitter: @MDAppeal)
Yesterday, the Court of Appeals granted seven certiorari petitions. I’ll be counting three of those petitions as one because they were on petitions filed by the State from the same Court of Special Appeals opinion, with all three petitions presenting the same questions relating to jury nullification.
The cases have been scheduled for argument during the Court’s December 2020 sitting.
Court of Special Appeals expands the boundaries of the tort of wrongful termination
In a case of first impression in Maryland, the Court of Special Appeals went where California’s courts have refused to go, holding “that the tort of wrongful termination may lie when an employer decides to terminate an employment relationship by declining to renew an employment agreement for which the parties anticipated the reasonable possibility of renewal.” Miller-Phoenix v. Balt. City Bd. of Sch. Comm’rs, CSA-REG-209-2019, 2020 WL 2781833, at *3 (May 29, 2020). Building on the Court of Appeals’ decisions in Adler v. Am. Standard Corp., 291 Md. 31 (1981) and Ewing v. Koppers Co., 312 Md. 45 (1988), the Court of Special Appeals gave Maryland employers the following message. If an employer allows an employment relationship to terminate—and the employer’s motivation for that termination contravenes some clear mandate of public policy—the terminated employee may have a claim for wrongful termination. Read More…
Maryland Appellate Blog 