Publisher's Notebook

The other shoe has dropped in the case of the Maryland judge who got upset and flattened the tire of the cleaning woman who parked in his parking spot.

You may recall the story, reported here back in January: Charles County Circuit Judge Robert C. Nalley got angry last September when a cleaning woman parked in his dedicated parking space. Using a key or other sharp device, he let the air out of her tires. In October he pleaded guilty to the misdemeanor charge of vehicle tampering. He was fined $500 and ordered to write a heartfelt letter of apology, which he did.

Our colleagues up at The Daily Record in Baltimore have the story

Nalley was roasted at a two-hour hearing of the Maryland Commission on Judicial Disabilities in April, in which he essentially was asked how could he have done something so juvenile. The judge was very remorseful. But he also said he believed deflating a tire was less an abuse of his judicial power than having the car towed or insisting that police issue a citation.

The lawyer for the commission and Nalley’s lawyer reached an agreement, which was approved by the Maryland Court of Appeals yesterday: The judge is suspended from the bench for five days without pay, and he must complete that suspension within 30 days.

Interestingly, the finding from Maryland’s highest court was not unanimous. The one-page order notes that one judge voted to give Nalley only a public reprimand.

The Commonwealth of Virginia has defaulted on a lawsuit.

You read that right. The commonwealth, along with James Madison University, has defaulted on a tortious interference case in New York. We’ll know next week how much it’s going to cost you and me.

Here’s what happened: A guy named Matthew Brady was the men’s basketball coach at Marist College in Dutchess County, N.Y., for four years. He had a contract with Marist that ran through 2011.

He took a job with JMU. According to the lawsuit Marist filed, JMU and the commonwealth tortiously interfered with that contract. Also, Brady went after some of the kids he had recruited for Marist, which was an alleged breach of fiduciary duty to Marist, “intentionally induced” by JMU, according to the suit.

Procedurally, Marist filed in state court, the case was removed to federal court, where JMU and the commonwealth answered and filed number of pleadings to get the suit kicked. The suit was remanded to state court. Marist moved for default a few months after the suit was back in state court.

According to the Poughkeepsie Journal, on June 30, the court granted the default judgment motion against JMU and the commonwealth. The judge set a hearing for July 26 to determine damages. The opinion is available on the Journal’s site.

In a story last year, I flagged the Carroll County Courthouse as one of the “Legal Destinations” you might visit if you wanted to combine legal history with some R&R.

In 1912, the courthouse was the site in the courtroom shoot-out that left the presiding judge, the commonwealth’s attorney and the sheriff dead, among others.

The locals think there’s money in history and they’ll second the motion that you should come visit their courthouse. In fact, according to the Galax Gazette, a Hillsville writer has penned a play based on the events of March 14, 1912.

Money raised from the production would fund scholarships for area students and help with the maintenance of the historic home of industrialist George L. Carter in Hillsville.

The Carroll County people are dreaming big. They plan to charge rates comparable to the Barter Theater over in Abingdon. If they host two performances a day from Thursdays to Sundays for the 18 months leading up to the 100th anniversary of the shoot-out, and if 50 people attend each show, they’ll make more than a million dollars.

Carroll County is southwest of Roanoke, along the North Carolina border. Get your GPS ready and make your plans.

It’s July and we’ve made the turn on 2010. What were the biggest news stories on our website during the first half of the year? In order of popularity, here you go:

1. Fifteen lawyers leave LeClairRyan. …to start a securities law boutique firm.
2. Wise County judge no longer hearing cases. We broke this story last month. Still ongoing.
3. Dress Codes: What is the prevailing view on associates’ appearance? Last month’s web poll garnered a record response.
4. Court Jester: Johnston explains ‘Why Judges Wear Robes.’ Campbell County’s Sam Johnston published observations from the bench.
5. Law firm sues for unpaid fee…gets it all! A stop-the-presses result from Henrico County.
6. It’s now official: The ‘Shaggy defense’ is a term of art. Slate Magazine picked up on this one.
7. LeClairRyan lobbyists jump ship. …to join the Richmond office of a Pittsburgh firm.
8. Griffith: Mims leads the field for high court. We wrote it Jan. 4; Justice Bill Mims was elected in March.
9. Couple not reconciled by ‘accidental sex.’ Not much more can be said, or needs to be said.
10. Former judge accuses prosecutor of lying in court. In N.C. federal court, ex-federal judge Walt Kelley took a U.S. Attorney to task.

The award for most appropriate headline of the day goes to the Cleveland Plain Dealer (see graphic of today’s front page, at right). The headline writers used one word – Gone. – to sum up the departure of Cleveland Cavaliers player LeBron James, who announced on a hyperventilating ESPN show last night that he was signing a contract with the Miami Heat.

I’m not a pro basketball fan, but I am a newspaper fan. The Plain Dealer’s front page is well done. I have to admit I liked the editorializing in the graphic, an arrow pointing to James’s finger: “7 years in Cleveland. No rings.”

I’m surprised the page wasn’t sponsored by that new (and very real) website: www.fyoulebron.com. I won’t link to it, but type in the URL and it says, pretty plainly, what you’d expect it to say.

News item: Two judges in State College, Pa., have had to retract expungement orders submitted by a lawyer trying to clean up his clients’ records. The initial papers ordered all pertinent agencies to remove traces of charges against two people; included were directions to two local newspapers to purge any coverage of those same offenses from their databases and archives. When the papers cited the First Amendment, the judges woke up, acknowledged same and reissued the expungement orders. The lawyer, Joseph Amendola, said, according to the Associated Press, that he was concerned “the media’s First Amendment rights to free speech were trumping his clients’ rights to have cleared records.”

I hope the folks at the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression are paying attention to this story. Every year, they give out their “Muzzle” awards, citing violations of the First Amendment. The center announces the awards each year on April 13, Mr. Jefferson’s birthday. This guy at least deserves a nomination.

Lawyers bring expungement motions for a variety of reasons — charges have been dropped or dismissed, or someone successfully completes a rehab program or a probationary term. One can appreciate the lawyer’s trying to protect his clients’ records and reputations. The courts can control the official records, which will show nothing after the expungement. But going after newspapers, and trying to make it appear as if an event never happened, sounds like something you’d find in George Orwell.

Mr. Amendola cited what may be a legitimate concern: Once an article is published and Google gets hold of it, it lives in a Google-cached world forever. He said this is a “national issue” that “needs to be decided by the legislature.” Maybe he should review his con law.

What’s even more problematic, though, is that the judges in State College have been signing similar orders submitted by this lawyer and others almost routinely, maybe without reading them and certainly without much thought.

The two judges said that they had 36 prior expungement orders directed at the local papers to review and correct. Toss them into the hopper for a Muzzle nomination, too.

Cole Porter, by way of Ella Fitzgerald, had it right: It’s too darn hot.

This morning the Danville paper has the news you need, a story with advice from an air conditioning expert on how not to blow your system during this infernal heat wave.

Don’t move the setting on the AC back and forth. Put it at one temp and leave it. Most AC systems will cool your house or office 20 degrees below the temperature outside. If it reaches triple digits again, in other words, the best you’re going to do is about 80 degrees. Take it and run.

[UPDATED JULY 6]

In honor of Independence Day, Slate ran a contest asking Twitter users to tweet the Declaration of Independence.

Imagine trying to reduce Thomas Jefferson’s 1,300-word magnum opus to 140 characters. Actually, it was using 124 characters; contestants had to include the hashtag #tinydeclaration.

Hundreds of people entered, and Slate noted that the entries fell into two camps – the literalists, who sought to recreate the Declaration’s political flavor, and the humorists, who sought to be funny.

My favorite came from NEHgov (the office of the National Endowment for the Humanities), in the form of a purported message to King George: “Dear George, it’s not you. It’s U.S.”

Slate posted the winners over the weekend.

The third runner-up, “for straddling the delicate balance between the literal and humorous,” came from @Boston1775: “We seek independence based on noble and universal ideas combined with petty and one-sided grievances.”

The second runner-up, hailed “for his direct and confrontational tweet,” was from @TJMonticello (Mr. Jefferson’s own Monticello): “All peeps are equal. Sick and tired of your tyrannical BS. Seeking independence. Your permission requested, not required.”

For “both historical accuracy and a Twitter-worthy modernization of communication,” @badanes took first runner-up: “Our Rights from Creator (h/t @JLocke). Life, Liberty, PoH FTW! Your transgressions = FAIL. GTFO, @GeorgeIII. -HANCOCK et al.”

The winner? A guy called @ApocalyseHow, who was a writer for Conan O’Brien and for “The Daily Show,” according to his Twitter bio. Slate complimented his entry for “reminding us that brevity is the soul of wit”: “Bye George, we’ve got it.”