Bruce Godfrey
[A personal note from Bruce Godfrey below.]
On January 25, I (Bruce Godfrey) was robbed at gunpoint outside my home in Owings Mills. Three men approached my automobile from behind and one banged a snub-nosed revolver against my driver side window. The robbers robbed me of my cell phone and the cash contents of my wallet. After the robbery, I gave extended statements to uniformed officers and detectives at Franklin Precinct in Reisterstown. The cell phone was one that I used heavily in my practice to assist clients, but was replaced reasonably quickly.
Within a week, three suspects were arrested and are being held on no bond now. It appears that two other people in Owings Mills were similarly robbed, including one pedestrian who may have been physically battered (I was not.) I do not wish to divulge further specifics of the case here, but the speed and efficiency with which the police acted really stunned me. I was blown away by their professionalism and speed. I am in awe, and I do not do “awe” very often.
My children live about a mile away from me with their mother not far from my law office. While I would not likely have been out late with the children, there’s no reason why this assault could not have occurred with both of them in the back with their car seats. That thought just makes me sick.
I need to something to thank the detectives and uniformed officers in this case, but I just don’t know what would be appropriate. I am just so grateful.
- Bruce Godfrey, 4 February 2012
Feb 012012
In honor of the custom of Black History Month, or perhaps more accurately American History Month with a focus on how Black Americans moved American history, the Law Office of Bruce Godfrey promotes the following original American historical source material from 1865, four months after Lee’s surrender to Grant at Appomattox.
Letters of Note, January 30, 2012:
In August of 1865, a Colonel P.H. Anderson of Big Spring, Tennessee, wrote to his former slave, Jourdan Anderson, and requested that he come back to work on his farm. Jourdan — who, since being emancipated, had moved to Ohio, found paid work, and was now supporting his family — responded spectacularly by way of the letter seen below (a letter which, according to newspapers at the time, he dictated).
… we have concluded to test your sincerity by asking you to send us our wages for the time we served you. This will make us forget and forgive old scores, and rely on your justice and friendship in the future. I served you faithfully for thirty-two years, and Mandy twenty years. At twenty-five dollars a month for me, and two dollars a week for Mandy, our earnings would amount to eleven thousand six hundred and eighty dollars.
…
We trust the good Maker has opened your eyes to the wrongs which you and your fathers have done to me and my fathers, in making us toil for you for generations without recompense. Here I draw my wages every Saturday night; but in Tennessee there was never any pay-day for the negroes any more than for the horses and cows. Surely there will be a day of reckoning for those who defraud the laborer of his hire.
…
Say howdy to George Carter, and thank him for taking the pistol from you when you were shooting at me.
The Law Office is pleased to announce that the Law Office has a new mentee in solo practice. Sharnae L. Smith, Esquire, a 2010 admittee to the Court of Appeals of Maryland and the proprietor of Smith Legal Services, LLC in Bowie, Maryland, will be training periodically with the Law Office of Bruce Godfrey on issues involving labor law including assisting on certain pro bono matters handled by the Law Office.
Ms. Smith and Bruce Godfrey became acquainted through the Maryland State Bar Association’s Solo and Small Firm list-serv; the two attorneys will begin cooperating on certain labor law projects beginning December 22, 2011. The Law Office is looking forward to successful cooperation on unemployment appeals and other matters germane to both attorneys’ practices.
Owings Mills, MD, November 24, 2011: The Law Office of Bruce Godfrey is pleased to announce the formation of a mutual of counsel relationship with the Law Office of Jezic, Krum and Moyse in Wheaton, Maryland.
Jezic, Krum and Moyse (JKM) has served a predominantly Spanish-speaking clientele in Montgomery and Prince George’s Counties, and has grown from a predominantly criminal defense firm to offer broader legal services. The Law Office of Bruce Godfrey will be serving the firm by assisting it with business, tax and employment law experience and skill sets including assisting workers of all backgrounds avoid, reverse and remedy illegal wage and hour violations and wage payment practices. In addition, Bruce wil assist as the firm’s northeastern “outpost” and local counsel to assist with legal matters northeast of the Patuxent River in metropolitan Baltimore from his Owings Mills office.
Bruce is currently improving his skills in the Spanish language in order better to serve JKM’s largely Spanish-speaking clientele. Bruce and JKM senior partner Andrew Jezic, Esquire attended Loyola High School in the mid-1980s and graduated from the University of Maryland School of Law in 1994 together. The Law Office of Bruce Godfrey views the formalization of the previous informal, friendly cooperation between the two firms as an excellent opportunity for both law firms to advance their mutual capacities and efficiencies and achieve a broader geographical and practice area reach for their respective clientele.
It pleases me greatly to see a brilliant classmate of mine from Maryland Law opening her own practice. Attorney Melissa Maguire, formerly of Whiteford, Taylor and Preston, has declared professional independence and now serves her clients as legal counsel on employment issues from her Roland Park office.
While I am proud to serve my labor law clients from an exclusively pro-worker, pro-union and pro-labor perspective, I respect the smart, diligent and ethical players on the other team. Melissa has counseled businesses on labor law issues for nearly her entire career and has earned recognition as a Rising Star and one of the Legal Elite by Superlawyers.com and SmartCEO magazine. She is published on highly technical issues of labor law and is active in the non-profit and philanthropic community as well. From my acquaintance with her from law school from 1991-1994 and after, I can certify that she has the brilliance, the toughness and the judgment to do in sensitive labor law cases what needs to get done for her management clients. Melissa was known as a top student and Law Review member and clearly was one of the people to watch out for for the future in our class. Businesses seeking guidance, negotiations or litigation services in the Mid-Atlantic would be very wise to pick up the phone and call her office at 410-905-4573 or visit her firm’s website.
Big firm life has its advantages; they have the human resources (slaves) to take on massive projects that require an army of attorneys. Plus they usually have access to good bagels, or so I have been served during settlement conferences. But as a militant solo who admires the likes of Carolyn Elefant and Susan Cartier Liebel, I am pleased when lawyers find the resources to go rogue, er, independent and build their own dreams for themselves and their families. The happiest lawyers – myself included! – seem to be the solos and I extend my best wishes to attorney Melissa Maguire upon her declaration of independence for prosperity, professional satisfaction and happiness.
Important Note: The Law Office of Bruce Godfrey takes no position as to the legal, political or social merits of recent “occupy” political demonstrations such as “OccupyBaltimore” or “OccupyWallStreet,” and is not a participant in such demonstrations. The purpose of this post is to discuss law that may be relevant to such news events. Also, this post contains a professional discussion of language laws and First Amendment obscenity/indecency that is not suitable for most workplaces; you are hereby WARNED of the NSFW character of this article.
In Maryland, one has a clear right to resist an illegal arrest and to shout the word “Fuck” at an officer who is attempting to conduct such an illegal arrest. In a 4-3 decision that has been cited by a number of other courts, the Maryland Court of Appeals held in Diehl v. State, 294 Md. 466 (1982), that the word “fuck” used as an expression of dissent towards illegal conduct did not constitute disorderly conduct and could not be prosecuted at all absent compelling circumstances.
In Diehl, the Defendant was exiting a stopped car when an officer ordered him back into the vehicle. The Defendant refused, stating that he knew his rights and had the right to leave the scene on foot. The officer, Chief Gavin, told Diehl that he would be arrested if he did not re-enter the vehicle; Diehl responded with the phrase ultimately at issue in the case, “Fuck you, Gavin.”
The Court of Appeals held that such a phrase could not be prosecuted in itself as a violation of the Maryland disturbing the peace statute, which prohibited “willfully disturb[ing] any neighborhood …. with loud and unseemly noises” or “profanely curs[ing] and swear[ing] or us[ing] obscene language in any neighborhood.” As a matter of statutory construction, the Court of Appeals held that Diehl’s word did not willfully disturb anyone and did not constitute “loud or unseemly noises” since Diehl’s words were clearly communicative speech rather than mere “noises.” Similarly, Diehl’s words were deemed not “profane” in the sense of religiously blasphemous nor “obscene” as defined under Supreme Court obscenity insofar as “Fuck” here expresses anger or indignation rather than erotic interest. Accordingly, there was no basis whatsoever for finding that “Fuck you, Gavin” violated the disturbing the peace statute.
The Court further held that the Diehl’s words did not constitute a provocation to Gavin himself to breach the peace. After reviewing Supreme Court jurisprudence on “fighting words” the Court of Appeals held that Diehl’s use of “Fuck you, Gavin” did not constitute the sort of abusive epithet prohibited as “fighting words” but merely constituted an objection to a meritless order not to leave an automobile under threat of arrest, which the Court noted was an illegal threat given a lack of probable cause for any crime by Diehl.
From the opinion:
“We conclude, therefore, that where, as here, a person is acting in a lawful manner (a passenger getting out of a stopped car) and is the object of an unlawful police order, it is not usually a criminal violation for such person to verbally protest a police officer’s insistence upon submission to such an order.”
Diehl at 479. The Court of Appeals went on to note that the charge of resisting arrest lacked merit as a matter of law under established precedent, since under Maryland law one had a clear right to resist an unlawful arrest by reasonable force and no probable cause existed for any arrest.
I am not certain that a content-based restriction on “blasphemous” references to the Deity or religious object would survive First Amendment scrutiny. In many predominantly Catholic parts of the world, religiously-themed vulgarities predominate over sexual and excretory ones. The word “calisse” (literally meaning “chalice”) and the much stronger “tabernac” (“tabernacle”) are so commonly used as a vulgarity in Quebec that some Catholic bishops actually took out ads explaining that “calisse” and other similar terms referred to Catholic liturgical equipment and concepts and were not merely a curse word. In Bavaria one can still hear “Sakrament” as a strong oath. Words like “fuck” and “cunt” which are truly severe in American English are not as shocking among, say, Francophone Quebecers or Irish speakers of English. I am not a scholar of the right to curse or to blaspheme in America or in Maryland, but would be skeptical that the use of “blasphemy” conveying even the slightest substantive content could be prosecuted.
As for those who would be participating in any “occupy” events, there is a lot to consider. One has some protection of your right to express yourself with vulgarities, if it’s really necessary (and wise?) One has the right to resist an illegal arrest; that is well-established, though an arrestee might have to win a few appeals to get that right upheld. And, not to put to fine a point on it, the Chief Judge of the highest court in this state was arrested for political activism at age 16 in lunch-counter sit-ins for civil rights. Whether any participant in any demonstration wants to spend a few years talking with trial and appellate lawyers – that’s a tougher question.
(None of this constitutes legal advice or creates a lawyer-client relationship with ANYONE – this is mere political commentary.)
I want to issue a big public “thank you” to Businessuites Owings Mills, the landlord for my law practice. Businessuites is making a major investment in a new telephone network which will allow client (and non-client) messages to be forwarded as .wav files to its tenants imcluding this Law Office.
The big advantages to this system are that the Law Office (myself and any assistant who may be working with me) often have the capacity to pick up an email even when lacking full telephone service from a remote location. The Law Office is largely “untethered” and the new technology makes it easier – and safer when driving – to stay current on messages. In addition, the .wav format allows for off-site back-up of messages to prevent misunderstandings and allows the Law Office to empty the mailbox promptly without worry.
I am glad that Businessuites cares enough about its clients to help my practice do a more efficient job of caring for my clients. Many thanks to Lisa Dukes, Jeannie and Jen at Businessuites Owings Mills!
Sep 122011
When my family’s house burned down in 1997, I felt little personal grief for mere things. My father suffered a minor burn on his hand from a hot doorknob during the 3 AM exit out of the soon-to-be three alarm blaze, but other than a little smoke inhalation no one suffered any meaningful medical blow-back from the fire. My family was safe; accordinglyI didn’t miss my socks, my shoes, my suits, even my diplomas. But the things that I most regretted losing – and was most eager to replace soon thereafter when insurance paid out – was two books by Jay Foonberg, Esquire of Beverly Hills.
Mr. Foonberg was and is a legend in the field of law practice management and marketing, particularly for solo and small-firm attorneys. One of his two books, “How to Start and Build a Law Practice” and “How to Get and Keep Good Clients”, was reportedly the book most often stolen from US law libraries (to compare, the Bible is reported as the book most often stolen from some U.S. libraries.) I had borrowed and re-borrowed his books in law school (did not steal them) and finally spent the money to buy the books from Mr. Foonberg’s publisher. Even at a high price, Mr. Foonberg’s titles were a bargain and a treasure for a young lawyer who desired in his heart to have his own practice, despite it all.
Jay Foonberg has given lectures on law office management, ethics, marketing and related topics in every state in the Union and many foreign countries. His name is legendary. You can find his books on the shelves of solo and small-firm attorneys of every color, creed, philosophy and location nationwide and beyond. So imagine my feeling now, in 2011, as I learn that I am now, at least technically, a peer of Mr. Foonberg in any forum, anywhere.
Jay Foonberg was one of the earlier instructors to join Solo Practice University, a professional resource for attorneys seeking to build their own practices and to learn what law school does not teach and possibly cannot teach; his course material on ethics and practice management are available to SPU students. I am pleased to announce that SPU has welcomed me as a faculty member to teach my course on unemployment appeals litigation, effective today.
The course covers the basics of unemployment appeals law, practice and procedure, with an emphasis on practical help to attorneys seeking to help this underserved client population while earning an honest and ethical living. The course is taught through a combination of video material and live office hours; my first office hours will be next Monday evening.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank Susan Cartier Liebel, SPU’s entrepreneurial founder and CEO, SPU’s chief technical officer David Carson and SPU’s virtual assistant contractor Laurie Mapp for their help in getting me online and live in both recent days and going back as far as 6 months. I view today as a major date in the history of my law practice and am very excited to get started. To Susan, David and Laurie, thank you!
“All Clients have the right to a clear and simple explanation of our work and how fees are charged.” – Law Office of Bruce Godfrey, Client Bill of Rights ¶2.
UPDATED February 2012: the Law Office is creating a new, simpler fee list for clients’ benefit. Please stay tuned.
In the spirit of helping clients and prospective clients understand how the firm does its work and charges fees, the Law Office of Bruce Godfrey has published on its website a basic list of fees describing some of the services provided by the Law Office and how fees are calculated and charged for those services.
Historically, attorneys were reluctant to publish lists of their fees out of the concern that such lists would be considered “unprofessional” or reflective of the practice of law being a “mere business.” The Internal Revenue Service has opined that law firms, when run other than as non-profits clinics, are businesses; the Internal Revenue Code states that we are businesses. Law firms set prices (we call them fees), invoice, make accounting statements, economize and survive amidst a highly competitive market.
There’s nothing wrong with stating that a law firm should not be only a business – we are ideally a learned profession and we are servants of the courts – but it is definitely a business in the mind of the IRS – which, let’s be frank, runs this country.
Clients have the right to know early, up front and clearly how fees are charged; this principle is embodied in the Law Office’s Client Bill of Rights. It is the hope of the Law Office that this list will help clients and prospective clients take away some of the unease and uncertainty around legal fees, for the benefit of themselves and, if they choose to enlist our help, the Law Office’s legal services business.
