Author Archives: Tucker Clagett

Get Emergency Contact Numbers on Grandma’s Drivers’ License

Posted on by Tucker Clagett

The Maryland Motor Vehicle Administration (MVA) may have done something right for a change. Do you want to make sure the right people can be contacted in a medical emergency when you can’t speak for yourself? Do you want to be sure YOU can be contacted in an emergency if something happens to a parent, or your grandmother?

The MVA has created a way to link 3 phone numbers to your drivers’ license numbers as emergency contacts. And the real wonder is that it is convenient to set up. You can do it on line in few minutes. All you need is your Driver’s License number, date of birth and last 4 digits of your social security number (which is used as your PIN).

This could save vital time in emergency. Being with your family over the holidays is the perfect time to set this up. You will need information like their drivers’ license number and SSN. If you have children, parents, friends or relatives who drive, make sure they have taken advantage of this feature. This could be especially important for someone who lives alone. Even if they have a cell phone with contacts, which number in that list is a Doctor or EMS Tech supposed to call? You can tell emergency services exactly who to call in an emergency by using this feature from MVA.

So to provide police and medical personnel with emergency contact tied to your drivers’ license, go to www.MVA.Maryland.gov and look for the “Online Transactions” section on the left side of the screen. Click on “more” in that list to see the entire list of online transactions you can do. There should be a link to click for “emergency contacts”. Just follow the instructions.

Have a safe and happy holiday season!

Are Private Zoos Legal In Maryland?

Posted on by Tucker Clagett

Could your neighbor run a private zoo in their backyard like the one in Ohio? If you live in Maryland, the answer is probably no. So chances are your Maryland neighbor cannot legally have lions, tigers and bears (oh my!). However, I have to use the word “probably.” There is one big exception to the general ban on dangerous animals in Maryland, which I will discuss below. I will also give you the full list of banned animals.

The guy in Ohio did not technically run a zoo. A zoo is technically a collection of animals held for exhibition to the public. Zoos are regulated by federal and state law. This guy ran his own private exotic animal collection. Surprisingly, the laws in many states do not regulate this type of activity. Ohio does not. The closest states to Maryland that do not are West Virginia, and North & South Carolina.

So in Ohio, this guy was perfectly within his legal rights to keep the 18 tigers and 17 lions that he let loose on his neighbors yesterday. That must have been a very scary situation for the neighbors. They had to live next to that nut for years wondering if his pet tigers were going to greet them at the front door one day.

Maryland has a law against the private ownership of “exotic” animals. What’s on the list? Probably most animals you would not want your neighbor to own. I am not enough of an animal expert to know this covers all the dangerous animals. I know, for instance, there are several species of snakes like boa constrictors and pythons that are legal in Maryland and people do own them. I don’t want them in my back yard either.
The Maryland Criminal Code (Section 10-621) prohibits the private ownership of these animals: fox, skunk, raccoon, bear; caiman, alligator, crocodile, member of the cat family other than the domestic cat (which would exclude the lions and tigers), hybrid of a member of the cat family and a domestic cat if the hybrid weighs over 30 pounds, member of the dog family other than the domestic dog, hybrid of a member of the dog family and a domestic dog, nonhuman primate, including a lemur, monkey, chimpanzee, gorilla, orangutan, marmoset, loris, or tamarin, and poisonous snakes in the family groups of Hydrophidae, Elapidae, Viperidae, or Crotolidae.
Why do I say your neighbor “probably” doesn’t own dangerous exotic animals? Because the law here came into effect in 2006, and there is an exception for anyone owning a banned animal before May 31, 2006, as long as they provide notice to the local county animal control authority. So if your neighbor had a tiger or cobra before 2006, they could still legally own it as long as they gave the required notice. And you can find out by calling your local county animal control authority.

Workers’ Compensation Cases Grind You Down

Posted on by Tucker Clagett

Does the workers compensation system grind people down? If you ask most of my clients, the answer is yes. I have to agree. The system has always been far from perfect. I have long thought a few changes in the workers compensation statute would go a long way towards making it more fair for claimants. But it does seem like the system has gotten meaner in the last few years.

I tend to see the workers compensation system from the claimant’s perspective. We are one of the premier law firms in Southern Maryland for workers’ compensation claims. Not many attorneys do workers comp cases. One reason is that the law is completely different from most other areas of law. The other reason is the fact that dealing with the constant barriers put up by workers comp insurers is a big hassle. You need to know how to deal with them, or you will pull your hair out.

The insurance companies have just about perfected the tactic of deny & delay. They are quick to cut the claimant off from the weekly check. Often the workers’ compensation claimant’s check is stopped on the thinnest evidence. When that happens, we have to file for a hearing. It takes 30-60 days to get one (usually more like 60). Who can afford to live without income for that long? It wears the claimant down, and it isn’t fair.

Sometimes the workers comp insurer will deny reasonable requests made by the claimants doctor. Fighting over medical care is something that takes a lot of my time. Often, a request for care will be denied or delayed, and the poor claimant cannot get that medical care for months while we wait for a hearing date.

Admittedly, there are some bad doctors out there and it is sometimes reasonable to deny the care requested by some of these guys. But when a well respected doctor requests reasonable medical care, it should be approved Sometimes the denial of that care is downright unconscionable. Sometimes, I strongly suspect it is done just to wear the claimant down.

All of these deny & delay tactics have the effect of wearing people down. They get sick of dealing with the matter. Sometimes they give up (always against my advice). Sometimes they just settle. Sometimes they pay for medical care out of their pocket. Sometimes they run it through their own health insurance, if they have it.

It isn’t a fair system. Until it is reformed, we just have to continue fighting when we have to. There is a good reason that very few workers’ compensation claimants try to handle their claim without an attorney. You will get eaten alive.

Hopefully, the workers’ compensation system will be reformed one day. But don’t hold your breath!

Search & Seizure. Do you have privacy on your balcony?

Posted on by Tucker Clagett

On September 7, 2011, the Court of Special Appeals decided, in the criminal law case of McGurk v. Maryland, that an overnight guest has a reasonable expectation of privacy on the balcony of her host’s house.  Ms. McGurk was on a balcony in Ocean City in the early morning hours when an Ocean City police officer, having smelled the odor of marijuana, spotted her and walked up to the balcony, uninvited.  She was arrested and searched.  The search incident to the arrest revealed marijuana and cocaine, and immediately found herself in the criminal law system.

Normally, a home is a constitutionally protected area that the police need a search warrant to enter and search for evidence of a crime.  The issues before the court was whether the balcony is part of that protected area and whether McGurk, as a guest, was entitled to claim that protection.  This is a good case to illustrate when the police can search your property, and what having a “reasonable expectation of privacy” means in criminal law.   

The Supreme Court in Minnesota v. Olson, 495 U.S. 91 (1990) has ruled that an overnight guest has a reasonable expectation of privacy in the host’s home.  In McGurk, the Court held that the balcony was considered part of the home itself, which gave rise to a reasonable expectation of privacy.  The court considered the placement of furniture on the balcony, its visibility from the street, and how it was customarily used by the owner and his guests.  The court concluded that the balcony was not open to the public and hence there was a subjective expectation of privacy.

In McGurk, the Court stated that a delivery person would not come onto the balcony unless invited. The court examined where on the property a casual visitor might be expected to enter uninvited.  The homeowner impliedly consents to have members of the public for instance enter onto a front porch to reach a doorbell.  There is no reasonable expectation of privacy in those areas.  The court will consider whether there are physical barriers, such as fences, or signs such as “No Trespassing” or “Private Property” in making its determination.  The court also took into consideration that the police entered at 3:15 a.m. stating that one wouldn’t expect to have uninvited visitors on the balcony at that hour.

Ultimately the Court held there was a reasonable expectation of privacy for Mr. McGurk.  Therefore, the evidence against her cannot be used in her criminal trial.  Deciding whether one has a reasonable expectation of privacy is often a threshold question in criminal law to decide if the police can search or not. 

The State argued that there were exigent circumstances.  Exigent circumstances, such as a fleeing felon, imminent destruction of evidence or danger, are often important in criminal law cases.  They can create an exception to the requirement that the police obtain a search warrant prior to entry into a protected area.  Here the state argued that the marijuana would be destroyed prior to the issue of a warrant.  The court held that the exigent circumstances exception was not applicable in this case because the officer didn’t learn of any exigent circumstances until after he entered into the constitutionally protected area.

The Court of Special Appeals  held that the motion to suppress should have been granted. This keeps the evidence obtained as a result of the illegal search out and will likely lead to an acquittal of the defendant.  There won’t be much evidence to use in her criminal trial, so she will likely go free.