By Brad McCullough

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected every facet of our lives and has raised many legal issues. Every day, lawyers’ e-mail inboxes are bombarded with messages touting webinars and publications addressing those issues. Does your insurance policy cover business disruption caused by the pandemic? Does the pandemic implicate the force majeure provision in a contract? Is a party’s performance of a contract excused by principles of impossibility, impracticability, or frustration of purpose? Those are hot legal issues at the moment, but ultimately those issues will be resolved by application of fundamental legal principles. Foremost among those principles are rules of contract interpretation. Whether a particular force majeure provision in a contract covers pandemics, or whether a specific insurance policy covers losses arising from a disruption of business caused by the pandemic, are questions that will be answered by interpreting the specific contractual provisions in play. Similarly, whether the purpose of a contract has been frustrated, or its performance made impossible, will hinge on the intent and expectations of the parties, as reflected by the terms of their contract. How do Maryland’s appellate courts address those issues? Two recent decisions, one by the Court of Appeals and another by the Court of Special appeals, provide some insight. Read More…

By Alan B. Sternstein

Two First Amendment cases recently decided in state and federal courts in Maryland interestingly parallel each other factually but reach different results as to the constitutionality of the governmental actions challenged in each case.  The facts and First Amendment issues in Clear Channel Outdoor, Inc. v. Department of Finance, No. 2910 (Md. App. Sept. Term, 2018) (“Clear Channel”),  which the Court of Special Appeals decided on January 29, 2020, bear a useful and instructive comparison to those in the Fourth Circuit’s decision in Washington Post v. McManus, No. 19-1132 (4th Cir. Dec. 6, 2019) (“Washington Post”), which was the subject of a post earlier this year on the Maryland Appellate Blog.  Read More…

By Stuart Berman, Guest Contributor

In June 2019, the Supreme Court held in Rehaif v. United States, 139 S.Ct. 2191 (2019), that in federal prosecutions of illegal aliens for knowingly possessing a firearm, the government “must show that the defendant knew he possessed a firearm and also that he knew he had the relevant status when he possessed it.” As expected, Rehaif was quickly applied to other categories of “prohibited persons,” including one of the most commonly-prosecuted federal crimes, “felon in possession” – knowing possession of a firearm that had moved in interstate or foreign commerce by a person previously convicted of a crime punishable by more than one year of imprisonment, under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1).

The trickier issue was whether Rehaif would be applied retroactively. Read More…