News & Insights
In 1935, my great aunt, Margaret Williams, then a teenager from Cowdensville, a tiny all-Black enclave in southwest Baltimore County, was denied admittance to Catonsville High School. This was not unusual. To discourage Black migration from the City, Baltimore County refused to provide an education to Black students past the seventh grade. Black pupils seeking…
When the loan documents provide for confession of judgment and the collateral encumbered by the mortgage securing the loan is commercial real property, the foreclosure process in Pennsylvania is straightforward. The lender first obtains a judgment by confession against the property owner. Assuming that the property owner does not succeed in having the judgment opened…
At the July 6, 2020 Baltimore City Council meeting, Councilmembers Ryan Dorsey and Shannon Sneed introduced a bill which proposes to raise the annual licensing fee for commercial parking facilities for the first time in nearly 20 years. Commercial Parking Facilities are defined in the City Code as “a garage, structure, or part of a…
Whether Maryland law recognizes an independent cause of action for breach of fiduciary duty has been an unsettled question. As the Maryland Court of Appeals noted in its July 14, 2020 opinion in Plank v. Cherneski, “Maryland appellate courts have not spoken uniformly on this issue” and have “made seemingly inconsistent pronouncements.” Consequently, “Litigants pick…
The protests engulfing the country over the last month have not only raised overdue awareness of the criminal justice system, but that they are just a symptom of the legacy of government policies and institutional practices that have advanced and perpetuated racial inequality. As a Baltimore-based law firm, we have reflected on ways that we…
Article effective based on date written: July 7, 2020 While the Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”) has long had a Whistleblower Office, the past few years have seen an uptick in the numbers of claims filed with the Office. In 2019 alone, according to an annual report from the IRS, the agency made awards exceeding $120…
June 2020 marked a critical milepost in Catherine Pugh’s long road to redemption. On June 19, the disgraced former mayor of Baltimore pleaded guilty to a state misdemeanor perjury charge for her failure to disclose her business interest in her self-published “Healthy Holly” books as a state senator. And on June 26, Pugh began a…
This article was originally published in the Journal of Tax Practice and Procedure, Volume 22, Issue 2. I. Introduction The coronavirus (“COVID-19”) has touched all our lives in a profound way. For the first time, we are experiencing stay in place orders, mandatory closing of nonessential businesses and extended periods of time in quarantine. The…
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Congress enacted a Paycheck Protection Program (“PPP”) under which businesses adversely impacted by the pandemic may obtain loans from the Small Business Administration (“SBA”) and use the proceeds to pay payroll and certain other operating expenses. If the businesses use the loan proceeds for approved purposes and satisfy certain other criteria for retaining employees, the loans are forgiven. If the loans are not forgiven, they must be repaid, albeit at a favorable interest rate.
I write to you today to recognize and pay respect to an important moment in American history. Friday, June 19th, or “Juneteenth,” represents the 155th anniversary of the occasion most commonly celebrated to commemorate the abolition of slavery – on that date in 1865, Union Army soldiers landed at Galveston, Texas, with the news that enslaved…
