More Legal Shenanigans Involving Baltimore Officials
The Baltimore Sun and The Daily Record report a new lawsuit involving a high level staffer of the City Solicitor’s Office.
There are three government employees involved in a 5 million dollar lawsuit against a Domino’s pizza franchise in Ocean City, Maryland. DeMaune Millard, Mayor Dixon’s chief of staff, Jonathan Carpenter, a state Department of Transportation executive, and Donald R. Huskey, an assistant city solicitor, are the plaintiffs.
These three folks are suing the pizza place because they were denied service, and because it took the restaurant’s staff approximately ten minutes to let them back out of the restaurant after the decision not to serve them. These plaintiffs were in O.C. for the annual Maryland Association of Counties conference in August, 2008. They left an official event that ended at 10:30 p.m. at about 1:30 a.m., and were shortly thereafter buzzed into nearby pizza place. They say they weren’t drunk, and were denied service for no reason. Unsurprisingly, the pizza place says the opposite- that they were intoxicated, loud and uncooperative, and that they made a threat. Specifically, that they said the manager was “a punk, and that if he was in the city, things would be handled differently.”
There are no allegations of race discrimination in the suit, although it notes the three plaintiffs are African-American and that the store employees are “Middle Eastern”, Asian, or white.
The three are being represented by an attorney in the city solicitor’s office who is moonlighting on his own time. City Solicitor George Nilson was unaware of this until asked by the media.
I have a few thoughts about this. I doubt I would gotten involved in this case if these plaintiffs had contacted me.
First is the most important issue in any lawsuit, damages. Assuming the facts in the complaint are true, they are seeking $500,000.00 (5 million divided by ten) in damages for every minute they were stuck in the store. I’d think that was excessive if they were trapped in the Guantanamo Bay Domino’s, much less Ocean City. That ten minutes must have been hell on earth. Good luck with that in Worcester County, a traditionally conservative venue for plaintiffs.
Second is the issue of race. Our firm does not handle race discrimination cases, but we support equal rights for everyone. The news coverage states that this lawsuit makes no allegations of race discrimination. If the plaintiffs’ lawyer hopes to try and inflame the jury by suggesting the plaintiffs were treated differently because of race, he should read Tierco, Md., Inc. v. Williams, 381 Md. 378 (2004). There, the Court of Appeals held it improper to introduce race into a case where the cause of action did not allege race discrimination.
Finally, I bet George Nilson is real happy about this. Two of his direct employees are involved in this case and nobody bothered to tell him. Also, I don’t see how the plaintiffs’ attorney can handle this in his “spare time.” Traveling back and forth to Worcester County is very time consuming, as is the legal work required to prepare a circuit court case like this for trial. For example, the docket entries indicate that there was a motions hearing on May 20, 2009 at 9:30 a.m. (a Wednesday). I'm not accusing him of anything, but handling this case off the clock will require a serious juggling act.
I really wonder what the plaintiffs are hoping to accomplish here.
P.S. Today I saw that Mr. Huskey was appointed the temporary head of the Baltimore City Inspector General’s office. That office's yearly budget was just cut from $500,000.00 to $300,000.00. How much attention can he pay to that, when when the whole office is worth less than one minute stuck in a pizza joint?
Comments
And the damages are? I loathe cases like this.
Posted by: David Weiskopf | June 24, 2009 8:10 AM
I'm with you Dave. I think if I was involved in this case, Ron & Laura would be questioning my professional judgment.
Posted by: John Bratt | June 24, 2009 8:58 AM