High Court

The Supreme Court left in doubt Monday whether gun owners have a Second-Amendment right to carry a firearm in public, declining to hear a case about concealed-carry laws that is similar to a Maryland suit that still has life in federal courts. Without a comment or dissent, the justices turned down a gun-rights challenge to the New York law, which strictly limits who can legally carry a weapon on the streets. To obtain a concealed carry permit, New Yorkers must convince a county official that they have a "special need for protection" that goes beyond living or working in a high-crime area.

A request by the former owner of the Parkway Theatre for a new condemnation trial was denied Tuesday by Maryland's high court . A&E North LLC argued that the city should have paid to remove “automobile parts and other assorted junk” stored in the theater before the start of the 2010 condemnation trial. During the trial, jurors would tour the property to determine its fair market value and A&E “hoped the theater would show better without the junk” - thereby resulting in a larger “just compensation” award for the city's taking of the property.

Maryland's highest court on Friday ruled that the Dobbins Island beach is not a public playground, overturning a lower court's decision that allowed unfettered access to all sandy areas along the shore, even those that are privately owned. The decision means boaters — including those who converge on the Magothy River each year for the "Bumper Bash" — will have to restrict themselves to the sliver of sand between the river and the "mean high water line," which marks the division between private and public property, according to the Maryland Code.

The Supreme Court left in doubt Monday whether gun owners have a Second-Amendment right to carry a firearm in public, declining to hear a case about concealed-carry laws that is similar to a Maryland suit that still has life in federal courts. Without a comment or dissent, the justices turned down a gun-rights challenge to the New York law, which strictly limits who can legally carry a weapon on the streets. To obtain a concealed carry permit, New Yorkers must convince a county official that they have a "special need for protection" that goes beyond living or working in a high-crime area.

A committee that proposes rules for Maryland's courts recommended changes Friday that could set off "massive audits" of documents filed by firms trying to foreclose on homeowners. The emergency proposal, which will be considered by Maryland's highest court on Tuesday, comes after revelations that two Maryland foreclosure attorneys did not sign a number of their affidavits but instead directed others to reproduce their signatures. An affidavit, the written equivalent of court testimony, cannot be signed on someone else's behalf.

In one of the cases kicking off its fall term, Maryland's highest court is being asked whether a judge violated an Orthodox Jew's right to religious freedom by holding a medical malpractice trial without him and his lawyer during a major Jewish holiday. Lawyers for Alexander Neustadter of Silver Spring argued before the Maryland Court of Appeals last week that Montgomery County Circuit Court judges got so wrapped up in the "efficiency of the docket" that rather than delay the trial or suspend it for two days of Shavuot, the court trampled Neustadter's constitutional rights.

Hooray for Maryland's high court ("Maryland's high court allows Dream Act to stay on ballot," June 13)! I'm sure CASA de Maryland will pull out all the stops to get this defeated, but considering that double the number of needed signatures were obtained, I'm not so sure they'll succeed. And no, my cheering the court's decision doesn't make me racist; it makes me someone who believes in the law. The term "illegal" means that these folks are not entitled to the rights and privileges of our citizens and those who have followed the rules to enter the country through the front door.

Both Eileen Ambrose ("Oppose health care act at your own risk," April 1) and Dan Rodricks ("Razing the JFX, lowering O's expectations," April 3) miss the issue before the Supreme Court. The issue has nothing to do with the provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act concerning health care, insurance, etc. The sole issue is the constitutionality of the mandate that requires each citizen to purchase insurance or pay a penalty thereby forcing each citizen to enter into a private contractual relationship with another.

Gov. Martin O'Malley filled 10 of the open judicial seats in Maryland Thursday, selecting Robert N. McDonald, the chief counsel for opinions and advice in the attorney general's office, for the state's highest court. McDonald, a former federal prosecutor who for about 15 years has written or approved all formal opinions coming out of the attorney general's office and is considered to have broad knowledge of Maryland law, will succeed Judge Joseph F. Murphy Jr. on the seven-judge Court of Appeals.

Calling DNA collection from those arrested for certain felonies a "valuable tool for investigating unsolved crimes," Chief Justice John G. Roberts on Monday said there was a "fair prospect" that the nation's high court would overturn a Maryland ruling striking down the practice as unconstitutional. The U.S. Supreme Court has not yet agreed to take on the issue, but statements made by Roberts in a four-page opinion signaled that was likely. The Maryland attorney general's office plans to file a petition asking for the court's review by mid-August.

Maryland's highest-ranking judge, Robert M. Bell, likes that his courthouse is dedicated to his predecessor, pointing out that the letters etching Robert C. Murphy's name on the building's exterior are filled in gold paint to make sure even nighttime drivers can see it. As Bell approaches retirement, mandatory when he turns 70 in July, he scoffs at the notion that his name might someday grace a building as well. But then, his name is forever etched in legal history by virtue of the Supreme Court case Bell v. Maryland.

The Baltimore County police union says county officials have ignored a ruling by the state's highest court to reimburse some 400 retired Police Department employees for overpaid insurance premiums. A Maryland Court of Appeals decision in November required the county to reimburse the employees for wrongful deductions, but in a motion filed Friday in county Circuit Court, the Fraternal Order of Police, Lodge 4, says it hasn't happened. The union estimates the county owes retirees $572,887.10 through May 2011.

Unless you waited in line for five days to get one of the coveted audience seats at the Supreme Court, you probably experienced this week's oral arguments on same-sex marriage as something of a Ken Burns film. Websites and TV broadcasters played audio of the proceedings as cameras panned over drawings made by courtroom artists. The only thing missing was some kind of soundtrack, maybe a dulcimer plucking folkishly, for it to be worthy of a PBS pledge drive. But if this treatment is evocative — or necessary, when a documentarian like Burns is working with a long-ago historical event such as, say, the Civil War or the early days of baseball — it seems downright archaic for something happening right now. Somehow, at a time when we've come to expect real-time access to news events everywhere else, what happens in the Supreme Court remains largely away from public view.

Lawyers for northern Baltimore County families and businesses whose $1.5 billion damages award against the ExxonMobil Corp. was largely overturned by Maryland's highest court asked for more time to seek reconsideration. In a three-page motion filed Friday, the attorneys representing plaintiffs in an underground gasoline leak at a Jacksonville Exxon station in 2006 said they need more time to respond to the Feb. 26 Court of Appeals ruling because of the complexity and impact of the case.

Maryland's highest court on Tuesday struck down the bulk of a fraud case against ExxonMobil Corp. stemming from an underground gasoline leak in Baltimore County, reversing most of $1.65 billion in judgments and dealing a stunning blow to hundreds of families. In two opinions on cases arising from the 26,000 gallon spill in Jacksonville in 2006, the Court of Appeals tossed out claims of fraud and ruled that plaintiffs could not collect for emotional distress or the cost of medical care to monitor possible symptoms of illness.

The redevelopment of an 11-acre tract in Baltimore's Remington neighborhood can move ahead now that the state's highest court has ruled on a zoning appeal that held up the plan for years. "The project would have been done, generating benefits for the community and taxes for the city if these petitions had not been filed," said Jon Laria, the attorney for the developer of the mixed-used project, called 25th Street Station. On Tuesday, the Maryland Court of Appeals released its unanimous opinion that two people who live near the development site, one in Remington and the other in Charles Village, are not eligible to appeal the Baltimore City Council's decision to grant the zoning approval for the project.

Two Howard County residents challenging more than 100 government decisions involving a wide range of issues including sewer system hookups and the construction of highway interchanges and homes have won a hearing in Maryland's highest court. Rejected by federal and lower state court judges, the challenge was granted one more forum last month, as the Maryland Court of Appeals agreed to consider whether the residents have the legal standing to challenge years of decisions by several county agencies.

Maryland's highest court threw out Wednesday the murder conviction of a man accused of shooting his fiancee in the head more than a dozen years ago, the second time appellate judges have vacated a guilty verdict in the case, citing errors by prosecutors and the judge. At Tony Williams' first trial in 1999, the state's attorney's office failed to disclose that a witness to whom the suspect confessed was a police informant, and the Court of Appeals ordered a new trial. At the suspect's second trial in 2007, the appeals court has now ruled that the judge mistakenly allowed videotaped testimony from another witness who died before the second trial, after a detective disclosed that the woman was legally blind and might not have been able to see the shooting, as she had claimed in court.

In a decision that could have implications for how show and sports tickets are sold in Baltimore, the state's highest court ruled Friday that service fees charged by Ticketmaster amount to scalping — setting up the possibility that people who attended some events might ultimately be eligible for refunds. The ruling, which stems from a class action lawsuit brought in federal court in 2011, relies on an obscure 1948 Baltimore ordinance rushed through the City Council to curb scalping of Navy football tickets.

Maryland's top court could make it much more difficult for undocumented immigrants to secure bail bonds, in a case likely to resolve long-standing questions about whether bondsmen are on the hook when clients get deported before trial. In a case pending at the Court of Appeals, Big Louie Bail Bonds has been ordered to pay more than $100,000 in Baltimore County in bail forfeitures after 10 defendants were deported before their criminal trials. Lower courts ruled that the company knew — or should have known — it was taking on clients with a high risk of deportation.