Lawyer

Greg Cantori plans to downsize when he retires. Really, really downsize. His retirement home is 238 square feet — one-tenth the size of the average new American house — and sits in his Anne Arundel County yard. He and wife Renee can hitch it to a truck and take it with them wherever they go. "It's so cheap — that's what's so cool about this," said Cantori, 52, who envisions a surf-and-turf future, alternating between the house and a sailboat. "We bought the house for $19,000.

A Baltimore judge postponed the trial of a second man accused of nearly beheading three young relatives nine years ago until October so that lawyers have more time to prepare arguments on DNA evidence. Adan Canela, 26, is charged with multiple murder and conspiracy counts in the deaths of three of his young relatives, who were killed in May 2004. His uncle, Policarpio Espinoza Perez, 31, was convicted on murder conspiracy charges in the case earlier this year and sentenced to life in prison last month.

Dolores of Baltimore wants a second opinion. The 70-year-old owns a house, but wonders if she should put the names of her four children on the deed to avoid estate taxes when she dies. She says a lawyer told her years ago that it doesn't matter as long as she named the children as beneficiaries in her will. "But will they have to pay more taxes that way, or will it be a legal hassle for them without their having been named on the house deed?" she asks in an email. I ran Dolores' question by two Maryland estate planning lawyers.

The Sun's obituary page carried the brief, unheralded notice of the death of Benjamin Lipsitz, which occurred on May 10. Consistent with Ben's penchant for humility, the notice went on to say that services were to be private. If those were his instructions or his family's wishes, then of course they had to be followed. However, it behooves our city and state to take pause to note the passing of one of Baltimore's great lawyers. Admitted to the bar in 1952, Ben proceeded to practice his craft for the next 60 years taking on the cases no other lawyer would handle, representing the unpopular, the underdog, and the undesirables.

The Sun's obituary page carried the brief, unheralded notice of the death of Benjamin Lipsitz, which occurred on May 10. Consistent with Ben's penchant for humility, the notice went on to say that services were to be private. If those were his instructions or his family's wishes, then of course they had to be followed. However, it behooves our city and state to take pause to note the passing of one of Baltimore's great lawyers. Admitted to the bar in 1952, Ben proceeded to practice his craft for the next 60 years taking on the cases no other lawyer would handle, representing the unpopular, the underdog, and the undesirables.

The Baltimore entertainment attorney who represented White House state dinner crashers Tareq and Michaele Salahi and "The Wire" actress Felicia "Snoop" Pearson was disbarred Monday after the state's highest court found he had, among other things, overbilled clients and misused money given to him as a retainer. The Court of Appeals upheld an earlier ruling that Paul W. Gardner II had violated official standards of conduct for lawyers, and he was ordered to pay court costs. The court ruled Gardner improperly paid his office manager for legal work, though she was not an attorney, and improperly filed a nonimmigrant work visa application, resulting in its being denied.

As the alleged leader of the Black Guerrilla Family gang at the Baltimore jail, Tavon White could get access to pretty much whatever he wanted, according to federal prosecutors: drugs, phones, money and sex. But he is now being held under more straightened circumstances at a state prison in Cumberland, according to his attorney, who is asking a judge to reconsider the conditions of his detention. “The totality of his belongings were as follows: a jump suit, one pair of underwear, shower sandals, a sheet for the bed. Period,” the lawyer, Gary E. Proctor, wrote in a court filing.

Clearly, neither defense attorney Joe Amendola, who has represented Jerry Sandusky in the Penn State sexual abuse trial, nor anyone close to him has ever been a victim of sexual child abuse ("Sandusky's wife: Accuser conniving," June 20). Whether or not the charges against Mr. Sandusky prove to be true, this case needs to be handled with the utmost professionalism. Mr. Amendola's remarks including "stay tuned," and "it's like a soap [opera]," etc., show a complete lack of understanding of the seriousness of cases like this one. It is one thing to believe in your client.

Marvin C. "Mike" Wahl, a retired labor lawyer and labor arbitrator, died Oct. 29 at Sinai Hospital of complications from a stroke. He was 97. The son of Austria-Hungary immigrants, Mr. Wahl was born and raised in Jersey City, N.J., where he graduated in 1932 from Lincoln High School. After earning a bachelor's degree in 1936 from Syracuse University, he entered Cornell University Law School, where he earned his law degree in 1938. Mr. Wahl, who was known as "Mike," began his legal career at Nordlinger, Reigelman and Cooper in New York City, where he met and fell in love with another lawyer, Blanche Genauer.

David M.F. Lambert Sr., a retired lawyer who had once been an FBI agent, died April 4 of a heart attack at his Crumpton home. He was 87. The son of an Episcopal minister and a homemaker, Mr. Lambert was born in Hartford, Conn., and raised in Cambridge and in a home on Southway in Guilford. He attended Gilman School and left his senior year to enlist in the Army Air Forces in 1943. Trained as a pilot, he flew missions in the Far East. After the end of World War II, he earned a bachelor's degree from Trinity College in Hartford and a law degree from Cornell University in 1953.

As the alleged leader of the Black Guerrilla Family gang at the Baltimore City Detention Center, federal prosecutors say, Tavon White could get access to pretty much whatever he wanted: drugs, phones, money and sex. He is now being held under more straitened circumstances at a state prison in Cumberland, according to his attorney, who is asking a judge to reconsider the conditions of his detention. "The totality of his belongings were as follows: A jump suit, one pair of underwear, shower sandals, a sheet for the bed. Period," the lawyer, Gary E. Proctor, wrote in a court filing.

Donald A. Krach, former general counsel for the Maryland Port Administration who was an advocate and goodwill ambassador for the port of Baltimore, died May 4 of complications from pancreatic cancer at his Timonium home. He was 80. "Don was a real cheerleader for our port, and he really worked hard with our clients to put more business through here," said James J. White, executive director of the Maryland Port Administration. "He had such a big personality. " "Don was one of those attorneys who came up through the state system, and he was absolutely enthusiastic about the port.

Frank James MacArthur, the blogger known as the Baltimore Spectator, could go on trial in May after pleading not guilty Monday to gun and resisting-arrest charges that have kept him in jail for months. MacArthur is accused in connection with a December standoff as Baltimore police tried to arrest him on a probation violation charge. During the standoff, MacArthur protested his arrest on an online radio station and live-streamed his telephone discussions with a police negotiator over the Internet.

A Baltimore Circuit Court judge ruled that a jury will be able to hear the taped confession of a teenage defendant in a murder case, rejecting his lawyers' claim that the police had coerced the statement from him. Markell Shelton Jones and his mother, Lakisha Jones, testified Monday that they had been influenced by police, an argument Robert Linthicum, Jones' attorney, made again Tuesday. "The whole thing basically reeks of coercion," he said. But Judge M. Brooke Murdock said police had done nothing improper in the way they conducted the interviews and said she did not find the defendant's mother credible.

Richard F. Ober, a retired lawyer and insurance company executive who enjoyed sailing the Chesapeake Bay, died April 13 from vascular disease at the Blakehurst retirement community in Towson. He was 98. The son of a lawyer and a homemaker, Richard Francis Ober was born in Baltimore and raised on St. George's Road in Roland Park. After graduating from Gilman School in 1933, he earned a bachelor's degree in 1937 from Princeton University and his law degree in 1939 from Harvard Law School.

Tiffany Alston, the former delegate from Prince George's County who was booted from the General Assembly last year, was disbarred Thursday. She consented to losing her license to practice law for reasons unrelated to receiving probation before judgment in criminal cases involving theft and misconduct. Last year, she was the subject of an indefinite suspension of her law license. According to the Court of Appeals order, she expressed her intent in April to disbarment. She was ordered to pay more than $7,500 to former clients.

Lawyers for a Harford County teen accused of killing his father last year attempted to convince a judge Friday that it would be unconstitutional to try the 17-year-old as an adult. Robert C. Richardson III's attorneys also said the boy is suffering from the effects of isolation at the county jail, asking at a motions hearing for their client to be transferred to a facility for juveniles. They said he is being held in solitary confinement at the Harford County Detention Center. "The jail in Harford County does not have the capability to address the needs of juvenile offenders and juvenile inmates," lawyer Kay Beehler said at a hearing Friday in Harford County Circuit Court.