February 2015 Maryland Certiorari Grants
What will warm you up on this coldest of winter days? Certiorari grants? No, probably not. But since you’re hopefully not venturing into the cold tonight, you’ll have extra time to read through today’s grants of review by Maryland’s highest court. (And no, the grants do not include an own-motion grant of certiorari in Syed v. State, as we recently wildly speculated.) Read More…
The Importance of the New Maryland Daily Record Database of Unreported Court of Special Appeals Opinions
By Michael Wein
Last week, Chief Judge Mary Ellen Barbera delivered the State of the Judiciary address to the Maryland General Assembly, concluding, “The Judiciary is doing well and it is making strides in becoming smarter, more efficient and increasingly accessible to the public. The future presents challenges and opportunities alike, and the time is ripe for reasoned and thoughtful reforms.” (Both the written transcript and webcast links are available on the Judiciary website.) Along those lines, recent changes involving the statewide introduction of electronic filing are taking hold, and may help make Maryland’s intermediate appellate court, the Court of Special Appeals, more accessible and transparent. This corresponds with the recent launch by the Maryland Daily Record, as a benefit for its subscribers, of an online searchable catalog of the Court of Special Appeals’ unreported opinions from Jan. 1, 2014, on.
How to Speed Up the Serial Appeal
By Steve Klepper (Twitter: @MDAppeal)
[Update: A reader, David Lease, pointed out to me the 4-3 decision in Stachowski v State, 416 Md. 276(2010), which appears to negate the possibility of bypass. Thanks to David and boo to Stachowski.]
Fans of the Serial podcast received some good news and some bad news this weekend. The good news: the Court of Special Appeals granted Adnan Syed’s application for leave to appeal. His ineffective assistance of counsel claim will be heard on the merits during the court’s June 2015 sitting. But there was bad news for those who had trouble waiting between Serial installments: final resolution is going to take a while. As Sarah Koenig explained on her blog: Read More…
Event: Recent Impact Decisions of the Maryland Appellate Courts
From the Maryland Appellate Blog’s inbox:
THE LITIGATION SECTION OF THE MARYLAND STATE BAR ASS’N AND ITS APPELLATE PRACTICE COMMITTEE
PRESENT
Recent Impact Decisions of the Maryland Appellate Courts
Thursday, March 19, 2015
5:00 – 8:00 p.m.
Court of Appeals of Maryland
Robert C. Murphy Courts of Appeal Building
Fourth Floor 361 Rowe Boulevard Annapolis, MD 21401
5:00 – 6:00 p.m. Social Hour Reception – Foyer to the Courtroom
(front doors to the Courthouse close at 6:00 p.m.)
Cash Bar (Beer & Wine) & Heavy Hors D’oeuvres
6:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m. – Court of Appeals Courtroom
Speaker Presentations and Audience Questions
$10.00 for MSBA Litigation Section
$25.00 for others
SPEAKERS:
HON. ALAN M. WILNER, Judge (retired), Court of Appeals of Maryland
RENÉE HUTCHINS, Professor of Law, University of Maryland Frances King Carey School of Law
BRUCE L. MARCUS, ESQUIRE, MarcusBonsib LLC
SPACE IS LIMITED
Please register on-line at http://www.msba.org/RecentImpactDecisionsMarch2015.aspx
January 2015 Link Round-Up
By Chris Mincher,
We here at the Maryland Appellate Blog know this isn’t the only place on the Web practitioners in the state are talking about appellate cases and issues. In addition to other sites of like-minded commentators, many law firms maintain blogs where appellate matters make frequent appearance. To bring these voices and topics into the larger discussion, we’ve begun a monthly roundup of posts by Maryland bar members that are relevant to appellate practice in the state.
“Soft Precedent”: Unpublished Opinions in Fourth Circuit Culture
By Steve Klepper (Twitter: @MDAppeal)
Getting argument before the Fourth Circuit is hard. Oral argument is a precondition for a published decision under its local rules. Even in cases where the court hears argument, there remains a strong chance that the opinion will be unpublished – even if there is a dissent.
From 2007 through 2014, the Fourth Circuit issued 259 opinions in which a judge dissented in full from the majority opinion. Seventy-four (28.6 percent) of those opinions were unpublished. In turn, 21 of those majority opinions were per curiam. During that same period, the Fourth Circuit issued 46 majority opinions that drew a partial dissent. Twelve (26.1 percent) of them, including three per curiam majority opinions, were unpublished. Read More…
In Maryland, interpreting cell phone records now requires expert testimony
With apologies to Bob Dylan, you may not need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows[1], but you need an expert witness to know which way a cell phone call goes. In State v. Payne & Bond, No. 85, Sept. Term, 2013 (Md. Ct. App. Dec. 11, 2014), the Court of Appeals – in a majority opinion written by Judge Lynne Battaglia and joined by three other judges[2] – built on its earlier decisions in Ragland v. State, 385 Md. 706 (2005), and State v. Blackwell, 408 Md. 677 (2009), and held that a detective “needed to be qualified as an expert under Maryland Rule 5-702 before being allowed to testify as to his process for determining the communication path of [the defendants’] cell phones,” as well as his conclusion that two specific cell towers “were the most pertinent to the case.” Slip Op. at 3. Under the Court’s holding and rationale, testimony interpreting technical data that is unfamiliar to a lay person and based on specialized knowledge or experience – and conclusions based on that data – must come from a witness who is proffered and qualified as an expert.
Argument Preview: The Causation Requirement for Liability Insurance Policies
By Steve Klepper (Twitter: @MDAppeal)[*]
[Update: The Court’s April 21 opinion ruled for the insurer on the causation issue and declined to reach the other questions presented.]
On February 5, 2015, the Court of Appeals of Maryland will hear argument in an insurance coverage action, Maryland Casualty Co. v. Blackstone International. If you’re not an insurance coverage practitioner, the questions presented are not likely to make much sense to you. Whichever way the Court of Appeals rules, however, the opinion is likely to draw national attention in insurance coverage circles.
January 2015 Maryland Certiorari Grants
The year’s first big snowstorm for the state has also brought a modest flurry of certiorari grants from the Court of Appeals, including a couple matters of interest for mass-torts practitioners: the effect of component replacements on a manufacturer’s duty to warn, and qualification of expert witnesses in lead-exposure cases. So after you’re done digging out from the blizzard, dig in to these new additions to the high court’s docket, found after the jump.
Fourth Circuit Tackles Federal Preemption in Bottled-Water Labeling Claim
From a distance, the federal-preemption doctrine seems rather straightforward – states can regulate virtually anything unless the federal government has put it off-limits. In practice, however, the doctrine is anything but simple, and the line between preempted and non‑preempted claims can be hard to find. In the context of FDA-regulated products, such as food, prescription drugs, and medical devices, defendant manufacturers/sellers are quick to point to the Supreme Court’s Buckman opinion for the proposition that state-law claims involving FDA-regulated products are completely preempted. See Buckman Co. v. Plaintiffs’ Legal Comm., 531 U.S. 341 (2001). But plaintiffs are just as quick to point to the Supreme Court’s opinion in Medtronic v. Lohr, 518 U.S. 470 (1996), to argue that states are perfectly free to regulate the same products. Despite the controlling effect of both precedential decisions, in the vast majority of cases where preemption is argued, there is a correct answer under existing law. It just usually takes careful analysis to find.
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