Publisher's Notebook

If you heard that a lawyer prepared a document and used cut-and-paste to include opposing counsel’s signature (without her permission), then submitted it to the court, what do you think the bar sanction should be?

A tut-tut and an admonition to go and cut-and-paste no more?

Disbarment?

Somewhere in between?

In Maryland, the answer is pretty close to the simple tut-tut. Our sister paper in Baltimore, The Daily Record, reports that Dana A. Paul of Edgewater, Md., took the signature of Annapolis lawyer Laura Penn Shanley from one document, used a photocopier to copy her signature, then affixed to a document he filed with the court.

The Maryland Court of Appeals, in Attorney Grievance Commission v. Paul, noted that there was a history of “bad blood” between the two lawyers.

The Maryland bar counsel who pursued the ethics charges wanted a suspension, and the Attorney Grievance Commission agreed, suspending Paul’s license for 90 days. On appeal to Maryland’s highest court, Paul came out ahead. The court, 4-3, reversed the suspension, writing that a reprimand was sanction enough.

A vigorous dissent charged that the majority had “trivialized” the misconduct.

Frederick Bouchat has been fighting the NFL’s Baltimore Ravens for a long time.

The team moved from Cleveland to Charm City in 1996; for the first three seasons in Baltimore, the logo on the team helmets was a “Flying B” – A letter B on a shield with a couple of raven wings on the side.

Bouchat, a security guard and an amateur artist, drew a “Flying B” logo and faxed it to the team in 1995. He asked for an autographed helmet and a letter of acknowledgement. He got neither when the team debuted the helmets in 1996.

He sued the team and the NFL a year later, and in 1997, a Maryland federal judge ruled the team had infringed on his design. The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the ruling, and the U.S. Supreme Court declined the appeal.

When Bouchat went to a jury in 2002 for damages, they awarded him nothing. Not even an autographed helmet.

Fast forward a couple of years. Bouchat, still steamed at designing a pro team logo with nothing to show for it, files another suit in Baltimore federal court against the Ravens and the league. The Flying B logo shows up in old NFL Films from 1996-98. U.S. District Judge Marvin Garbis tossed the suit, but the 4th Circuit reinstated parts of it.

Now, Bouchat wants to add another defendant – Electronic Arts Inc., the maker of the wildly popular Madden football video games.

The Daily Record, our sister paper in Baltimore, reports that Madden 2011 apparently has a “retro” feature programmed into it, allowing players to use an old logo or uniform for the various teams.

And yes, Bouchat’s lawyer said, the “Flying B” belonging to his client shows up in the game.

No word from the judge when he will rule on adding EA to the suit. Bouchat may recognize the judge — Garbis is the same guy who threw out his suit in 2008, before the 4th Circuit reinstated portions of it.

Note: The images below, from the Maryland Intellectual Property Law Blog, depict Bouchat’s original 1995 drawing and the Ravens’ initial helmet logo.

If you’re a fan of pro football, you’ve no doubt heard of the National Football League’s crackdown on helmet-to-helmet hits this year, with fines levied by the commissioner.

James Harrison of the Pittsburgh Steelers has become the poster child for helmet offenses. Just yesterday he got slammed with another fine, one for $25K, for a helmet-led hit on Buffalo Bills QB Ryan Fitzpatrick on Sunday. Harrison has been fined four times for a total of $125,000 this season.

Inevitably the helmet-to-helmet issue has made it to court, but in a roundabout way. Up in Maryland, a former player for the Carolina Panthers and Washington Redskins is seeking a bigger benefit payment from the NFL’s pension plan. Eric Shelton played three seasons with the Panthers, then signed with the ‘Skins in 2008 as a free agent. He was a Redskin for six days — he took a helmet-to-helmet hit during training camp and his career was over.

The Daily Record, our sister paper in Baltimore, has the full story.

Trend Alert: Here’s one you may not have seen yet, but odds are, it will make its way into your life soon.

There is a movement, mostly spurred by social media such as Twitter, to start referring to the Metropolitan DC area as “the DMV” (as in District/Maryland/Virginia).

What’s wrong with “Nation’s Capital” or “Metro DC,” you ask? When you’re limited to 140 characters a post, those titles take up much-needed room.

The Washington Post first flagged the development with an article back in July. The Post writer’s take was generally positive, likening the need for a cool regional nickname along the lines of “H-town” for Houston, or “the 612″ for Minneapolis (taken from the area code) or “the ‘nati” for Cincinnati. OK, Cincy needs to work on this.

TBD, the TV station/news website covering the Metro DC area (I’m not succumbing yet), notes that “the DMV” has been pretty controversial. TBD has solicited comment from Twitter users with alternate hashtags, #dmv and #nodmv.

The “no” votes are winning. Reasons for the thumbs-down:

One guy tweeted, “@TBD #nodmv, mostly because I live in #NoVA and want nothing to do with Maryland. #EffMD”

Another woman said, “@TBD No DMV. Don’t associate my favorite city with the most god-awful place on earth: the Department of Motor Vehicles.”

That sounds pretty reasonable.

Say you’re a domestic relations lawyer in Fairfax and you have a client who needs a divorce. She lives in Herndon and her husband has moved out, finding a place across the Potomac in Rockville, Md.

You need certain information and you figure you’ll have her call him and tape it. After all, that’s okay here in the commonwealth, right? We have a one-party-consent wiretap statute. (i.e., if one party consents, it’s legal).

Hold the phone (literally). Our Boston-based sister paper, Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly, is reporting a case that should give you pause. Check out the story, which we’ve posted on our site.

In the case, a guy from Virginia Beach calls some employees in Massachusetts and allegedly tapes the conversations, unknown to them. The tapes come to light during discovery. The employees file suit, claiming a violation of the Massachusetts wiretap law, which requires two-party consent.

Not to worry, says the guy’s lawyer. Two well-respected federal cases from the Bay State address the issue and go our way. But the guy may be up the dirty creek without the proverbial paddle after the Superior Court judge gets done. He ignores the federal cases and says that under the Restatement of Conflicts, the employees’ claim for violating the statute goes forward.

Back to our hypo. Most states have laws like ours, allowing the taping with one-party consent. Twelve states require all parties to consent and Maryland is one of them.

The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, a journalists’ group, conveniently has surveyed all 50 states and provides a run-down.

The opinion is from a trial-level judge, so it is persuasive, not precedential. But still, as they used to say on “Hill Street Blues,” let’s be careful out there.

Every now and then we’ll get a story about a judge or lawyer behaving badly, based on something really kind of off the wall.

Here’s one from Southern Maryland: A circuit judge has been brought up on ethical charges for…deflating the car tire of a part-time cleaning woman at the courthouse.

What sounds like a juvenile prank actually happened last August, according to The Washington Post. Charles County Circuit Judge Robert C. Nalley, 66, apparently didn’t like the fact that a car was parked in a restricted zone. He used a pen or other sharp object to deflate the car tire of Jean Washington, a part-time member of the cleaning crew at the courthouse in La Plata.

Washington’s reason for parking there: It is dark when she finishes her shift and she didn’t want to walk through an isolated parking lot alone.

In his response to the charges, Nalley admitted deflating the tire of the car. Cars parked in the wrong place seem to bug Judge Nalley. After the incident became public, he told a reporter that yes, he did it, and that he had done this before.

The Maryland Commission on Judicial Disabilities will hear the charges against Nalley, which are based on the canon that a judge “shall respect with and comply with the law and shall act at all times in a manner that promotes public confidence in the impartiality and integrity of the judiciary.”

The judge is willing to step up and take his medicine. He pleaded guilty to tampering with a vehicle in October and paid a $500 fine. In a creative sentencing twist, he also was ordered to write a “heartfelt” apology to Washington.

Nalley’s lawyer said he will “consent to an appropriate reprimand” from the Maryland judicial commission to the administrative charges.