Maryland, My Maryland

 Balmer Sun, Maryland Supreme Court vacates Baltimore’s $153M opioid verdict, sends case back

The Maryland Supreme Court on Friday wiped out Baltimore’s $153 million opioid verdict, sending the case back to a lower court and dealing a major blow to the city’s efforts to hold drug distributors liable under public nuisance law.

In a brief order, Chief Justice Matthew Fader said the court was acting in light of its recent ruling in Express Scripts, Inc. v. Anne Arundel County, which sharply limits how public nuisance claims can be used in opioid litigation. The justices granted review, vacated the Baltimore City Circuit Court judgment and remanded the case for further proceedings consistent with that decision.

The move effectively erases the jury’s finding that distributors McKesson and Cencora were liable for contributing to Baltimore’s opioid crisis.

Retired federal judge Andre Davis said the order leaves little room for the city to recover damages from the companies that went to trial.

“This order says, ‘You lose, Baltimore City,’” said Davis, who previously served on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and for three years as Baltimore’s city solicitor. He added that by referring to the “Express Scripts” ruling, the high court’s reasoning creates a “double loss” for the city.

“The case is over. Express Scripts held that not only does Maryland Law not afford a right to the city to bring this action, but even if the law did, it would be preempted by federal law,” Davis said.

Baltimore sued McKesson and Cencora, previously known as AmerisourceBergen, in 2024 for fueling the city’s opioid epidemic by shipping what it said were unreasonable amounts of prescription opioids to the area. The two companies accounted for 60% of the prescription opioid market in Baltimore, city lawyers said. McKesson and Cencora sent 320 million oxycodone pills within the city from 2006 to 2019, according to the lawsuit.

A Baltimore jury had originally awarded $266 million after finding the companies shipped excessive amounts of opioids into the city. Circuit Judge Lawrence P. Fletcher-Hill later reduced that award to $153 million, which the city accepted in 2025.

 Mattie Matlock hurt worst. 

Not Gonna Do It

Even if it's "against the law." Field and Stream, Don’t Call Them Snakeheads in Maryland. They Are Now Chesapeake Channas

Maryland legislators hoping to control Northern snakehead numbers by encouraging more people to eat the invasive fish have succeeded in slapping a new menu-and-cookbook-friendly label on the toothy predator: Chesapeake Channa.

Maryland Senator Jack Bailey and co-sponsor J.B. Jennings introduced Senate Bill 207, “Natural Resources — Northern Snakehead — Common Name” in January. During a hearing calling for its passage, Bailey explained that “This bill seeks to encourage consumption of the snakehead and better manage its population by giving the snakehead a new name.” Todd Morgan, delegate for St. Mary’s Counties, pointed to successful rebranding campaigns that transformed the slimehead into the orange roughy, dolphinfish into mahi-mahi, and the Patagonian toothfish into Chilean sea bass as reasons to back the bill. “The crux of this is we have a public relations problem,” Morgan wrote. “Watermen want to catch these fish, restaurants want to sell them, and environmental experts want them gone.
The big roadblock to all of this is the lack of consumer interest in eating the fish. It tastes great, makes delicious fillets, and is considered a delicacy in many parts of the world. However, most people can’t get past the name of the fish—nobody wants to eat a fish named the Snakehead!”

 

The first moniker Sen. Bailey proposed—Patuxent Fish—caused a backlash from devotees of the historic Patuxent River. Nearly 200 people signed a petition condemning the name for potentially
stigmatizing the Patuxent by creating an impression that there is “something onerous or unsavory about the river” and its marine life. Riverkeeper Fred Tutman told WUSA TV that the Patuxent has great cultural significance to many Marylanders, and “to stigmatize it with an invasive outsider—a fish that doesn’t really belong here—that’s a little harsh.”

Bailey’s effort gained traction after he pivoted to the catchier “Chesapeake Channa,” and SB 207 passed both chambers in March and was approved by Gov. Wes Moore on May 9.

 

Channa refers to the snakehead’s scientific name, Channa argus. The species is considered an important food fish in its native range, which stretches throughout eastern Asia and includes parts of China, Korea, and Russia. It’s discovery in the United States in 2002—in a Crofton, Maryland, farm pond—led to widespread concern that the voracious predator would threaten the Chesapeake Bay ecosystem. Recreational fishermen and some chefs have embraced the hard-fighting fish, which is indeed excellent table fare. Now, Maryland lawmakers are hoping diners will join the battle—with a fork if not of a fishing rod.

I didn't know that legislatures could declare what the common name of a fish could be. Most common names are derived organically, people with experience with the fish finds some characteristic, in this case the snake like appearance and the mouth full of teeth, and use that to come up with a name, and it get's into general use by consensus of public. I know of no other case where a legislature has declare what the common name of an organism of any sort, let alone a fish. Imagine the legislature renaming Blue Jays "Blue Cyanocitta," because some guy named Jay was offended. And that ignores the problem of different states coming up with different names.

The Wombat has Early Morning Rule 5 Monday: Smokin’ Blonde ready and awaiting your attention at The Other McCain.

Maryland, My Maryland

From the Dave Kopel at the Volokh Report, Law Enforcement Trainers File Scotus Amicus Brief against Maryland Rifle Ban

Citizens should be able to choose the same high-quality defensive arms that peace officers choose
 
Last week the International Law Enforcement Educators & Trainers Association filed an amicus brief in a U.S. Supreme Court case challenging Maryland's ban on many common semiautomatic rifles. The case is Bianchi v. Brown, and it has an unusual procedural posture; it is a petition for certiorari before judgement. Yet the case is one on which the U.S. Supreme Court has already ruled.

This post will first summarize the amicus brief, and then provide the procedural background, which is detailed in the Bianchi plaintiffs' cert. petition.

The facts about the banned rifles

As detailed in the amicus brief, the semiautomatic rifles banned by the Maryland General Assembly fire only one shot each time the trigger is pressed. This is the same rate of fire as the most common semiautomatic handguns, such as those made by Glock, Smith & Wesson, or Ruger.

The claim by gun prohibition advocates that such guns fire 300 to 500 times per minute has no basis in fact, and is contrary to common sense. It would take a superhuman trigger finger pull a trigger at the rate of 5 to 8 times per second, let alone do so for a full minute.

Nor are the banned rifles, including those based on the AR-15 platform, more powerful than nonbanned rifles. To the contrary, their standard ammunition is .223 inch or 5.56mm bullets that are small compared to most other rifle ammunition. Accordingly, their kinetic energy is lower.

Because the banned rifles are more powerful than handguns, but less powerful than most other rifles, the relatively low wounding power of this ammunition has been confirmed by decades of study by the US Army's Ballistic Research Laboratory.

Moreover, as documented in police training manuals, the banned rifles are the safest for defensive use within buildings, because their ammunition is especially unlikely to penetrate a wall.

Since when do actual facts have anything to do with gun control? 

Oregon, My Oregon

At Da Wire, Court Upholds Decision To Block 10 Republicans From Running For Re-Election After Abortion Protest

The Oregon Supreme Court has upheld a decision from Democrat Secretary of State LaVonne Griffin-Valade that 10 Republican state senators cannot run for re-election after they participated in legislative walkouts over radical Democrat-backed bills on abortion, transgenderism, and guns.

Those banned from running for re-election included Senate Minority Leader Tim Knopp, who sued Griffin-Valade over her determination that a new measure aimed at restricting walkouts applied to the 10 Republicans. Republicans in the Senate participated in a six-week walkout over Democrat control of the body, which Knopp described as being run like a “banana republic.”

“We obviously disagree with the Supreme Court’s ruling,” Knopp said on Thursday. “But more importantly, we are deeply disturbed by the chilling impact this decision will have to crush dissent.”

The lawmakers were banned from running for re-election thanks to the 2022 voter-approved Measure 13, which was designed to punish lawmakers who participate in walkouts. In addition to Knopp, the Republicans banned from running for re-election include Brian Boquist, Lynn Findley, Bill Hansell, Dennis Linthicum, Art Robinson, Daniel Bonham, Cedric Hayden, Kim Thatcher, and Suzanne Weber.

“Those other materials [info on Measure 13] expressly and uniformly informed voters that the amendment would apply to a legislator’s immediate next terms of office, indicating that the voters so understood and intended that meaning,” the Supreme Court said in its decision disagreeing with Republicans arguments that the measure was worded in such a way to allow them to still run for re-election.

Republicans in red states should immediately pass such legislation.  

Are Maryland's Chickens Coming Home to Roost?

Bill Banning New Poultry Factory Farms Debated

The poultry industry on the Eastern Shore produces about 300 million chickens a year. But the byproduct is about a half billion pounds more manure than can be absorbed by crops when farmers spread the litter as fertilizer for their corn and soybeans. That leads to runoff of phosphorus pollution into rivers, streams and the Bay.

In about two years, pollution control regulations imposed by Governor Larry Hogan’s administration will restrict manure application on about 160,000 acres of farms on the Eastern Shore that are already overloaded with phosphorus. But state officials do not know what to do with all the extra tons manure that farmers will no longer be able to spread under the new rules.

The Maryland Department of Agriculture does not have enough trucks or drivers to ship the waste to farms outside of overloaded parts of the Chesapeake Bay watershed. The state has not built storage depots or lined landfills to deal with the excess waste. And there is no longer an economic market for selling the manure as fertilizer, because of overproduction and the new restrictions.

As state officials wrestle with this problem, state Delegate Vaughn Stewart, a Democrat from Montgomery County, has come up with a temporary fix: The state should ban the approval of any new industrial-scale poultry houses until officials come up with a solution for the manure overload.

Speaking during a hearing last week on his House Bill 1312, Delegate Stewart said a pause in construction of new large chicken houses would also allow the state to study the ammonia air emissions that are blown out of the facilities’ exhaust fans, along with bacteria, particles of manure, and other air pollutants

“Emissions from these factory farms are linked with negative health consequences,” Stewart said. “The childhood asthma rates in places like Wicomico County are three times the national average, and the respiratory disease rates are 54 percent higher than the state average.”

Sarah Goldman, a program coordinator at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School for Public Health’s Center for a Livable Future, supported Stewart’s bill, as did several environmental groups and local residents concerned about the expansion of Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations or CAFO’s.

"Poultry CAFO’s threaten workers and community health,” Goldman said. “One Pennsylvania study showed that living in close proximity to poultry operations may increase the risk of community-acquired pneumonia.”

But the bill is strongly opposed by the influential Maryland Farm Bureau and poultry industry.

“There is a negative correlation with number of birds, in a county, and the prevalence of asthma, in that county,” said Steve Levitsky, a vice president at Perdue Farms. “The counties that did have high prevalence of asthma had the highest smoking percentage on the lower Eastern Shore. So I think there are other variables in place that are unrelated to poultry.”

Can we pass a law that limits the amount of chicken Montgomery County can import?

The Wombat has Rule 5 Sunday: Joy Harmon up on time at The Other McCain.

Oil Company Lawsuit Goes Horribly Wrong

For the person suing the oil company: Schadenfreude: Enviros’ Lawyer From Chevron Shakedown Ordered To Pay Them “Bigly”

Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Those of you who have been following our years-long coverage of what’s become known as the Chevron Shakedown are probably already familiar with Steven Donziger. He’s the New York attorney who worked with a corrupt court in Ecuador and several environmental groups in the United States to achieve a bogus judgment against the energy giant valued in the billions of dollars. That fell apart completely under court scrutiny and instead of winding up with a huge payday, Donziger found himself on the losing end of a RICO trial in New York.

Now, adding insult to injury, that same court has come back and determined that someone does indeed need to pay. But it’s not Chevron. Saying that, “the case is over save for the matters of costs and attorney fees,” the presiding judge brought down the hammer on Donziger for the cost of the massive court fees incurred. And he brought it down hard.

The cost of fraud just went up for Steven Donziger.
A U.S. federal court in New York has ordered Donziger, mastermind of the Ecuadorian racketeering and fraud scheme against Chevron Corp., to pay the company $813,603 for his share of court fees from his 2013 RICO trial.
In a 49-page opinion last week, U.S. District Court Judge Lewis A. Kaplan, who presided over the RICO proceeding, reiterated that “Donziger and his co-conspirators attempted to extort billions of dollars from Chevron” through falsified evidence, bribery, coercion and the ghostwriting of a $19 billion court judgment against the company in Ecuador. The RICO ruling, which was unanimously affirmed by the U.S. Court of Appeals, granted Chevron the right to recover the costs of the action.
Last Wednesday, the court rejected all Donziger’s arguments for not paying as baseless or unsupported by evidence, adding he was not entitled to favorable court “discretion” due to his “repeated” and “egregious misconduct” and “outrageous behavior” throughout the case.

From the accounts given of the hearing, it sounds like Donziger’s team attempted to relitigate the RICO trial and the original rulings but the judge was having none of it. The case was closed. The only review required was a summary of the things Donziger was found to have done during the attempt to rob Chevron of billions of dollars. It wasn’t a pretty list.

• Blackmailed a judge to abandon judicial inspections and appoint a “global expert;”
• Corrupted the “expert,” Richard Cabrera;
• Wrote Cabrera’s report;
• Falsely passed off Cabrera’s report as the work of an independent, impartial expert;
• Ghostwrote former Judge Nicolas Zambrano’s $19 billion judgment “which demonstrably relied on the fraudulent Cabrera report.”

Even the American justice system is better than that, at least usually. I touched on this lawsuit once in reference to Sharon Stone, who played, or rather failed to play, a bit part as a paid anti-Chevron activist, and got sued for her trouble. One of many reasons that you should have no faith in celebrity spokespeople. They're stupid, or at least woefully ignorant outside their field of expertise, which is pretending expertise. Also, they may not believe at all, and are simply collecting a check.

Wombat-socho has "Late Night With Rule 5 Monday: Champagne Season" ready for your edification and amusement.

Chicagoans to Obama Library: Not in My Backyard

Proposed Obama Presidential Center

Obama’s Presidential Center facing environmental impact lawsuit

As more information is being revealed about how badly Obama behaved in office (e.g., allowing Iran to obtain an American drone), more and more Americans are overcoming their reticence at criticizing the first black President. I believe that the mocking of the official portraits is merely the beginning of the end of the grand legacy that was planned.
Now, a group of Chicago community activists have filed a lawsuit demanding answers about the Barack Obama Presidential Center’s “impact on the environment” of the historic Jackson Park area.

“Like the public generally, we find the Obama Foundation and City of Chicago not forthcoming,” Gabriel Piemonte and Janet Geovanis, two members of the Coalition to Save Jackson Park, wrote Wednesday in a Hyde Park Herald letter to the editor. “This is a massive development involving public land, and we have been kept in the dark about too many details.”
The coalition, which filed the Freedom of Information Act complaint on Jan. 16, accused the “wealthy Obama Foundation and the city officials it works with” of refusing “to engage with citizens whose housing, schools, and parks will be forever altered” by the library’s construction.
The group’s FOIA request, filed Nov. 3, sought information on a host of environmental impact issues, including “potential flooding and run-off,” “avian-migration and nesting issues,” and “impact on local microclimate and temperatures in Jackson Park.”

Like so much of the history of the Obamas, the residents fear what was promised will not be the actual reality.

“My client is concerned about deals cut in secret and what those were,” said Daniel Massoglia, the attorney who filed the suit on behalf of the coalition. “The concern is that private interests are co-opting public land to build what is no longer accurately called a presidential library with very little community involvement.”
…Despite the Obama Foundation’s insistence that the center will have the same feel as any other presidential library, just not be operated by the National Archives and Records Administration, “it has changed and that does matter,” said Gabriel Piemonte, a Jackson Park resident and member of the coalition. “I feel that this isn’t what we talked about,” Piemonte said. “We talked about a more seriously purposed facility.” Piemonte will be content when “the community is a part of the decision-making process about the center,” he said. “The city is not sharing with us.”

I project there will be many more complaints and lawsuits unless the plans for the library begin to reflect the true nature and extent of Obama’s national legacy.

Contrary to the author at Legal Insurrection, I strongly doubt that the opposition has much, if anything, to do with disappointment in Obama's policies. I suspect it is more likely to reflect the almost reflexive opposition of some factions of liberal communities to anything resembling development. Liberal believe, despite all the best available evidence, that liberal policies are good for urban communities. Still, it's kind of amusing to see some blue on blue action. They need to add more windmills and solar power to the plant.

It's surprising to me that right wingers have not adopted the liberal strategy of environmental lawfare to stop or at least mitigate, liberal plans. It's an obnoxious tactic, but I don't think that we should unilaterally disarm.

Massachusetts Considering Commercial Striped Bass Ban

State weighs ban on commercial striped bass fishing

Striped bass are New England's premier sport fish, sought by thousands of anglers who prize them for a fighting spirit and high-quality fillets.

Stripers were pushed to the brink of extinction in the late 1970s but made a dramatic comeback. Now recreational anglers say the coveted fish again is struggling, and they’re lobbying Beacon Hill to implement new regulations that include making the fish off-limits to commercial fishermen.

One proposal, filed Rep. Walter Timilty, D-Milton, would limit commercial licenses to fishermen who can demonstrate they've caught and sold more than 1,000 pounds of striped bass annually over the last five years.

That's a pretty small quota. I've been on trips with Walleye Pete where we caught more than 800 lbs of stripers in one day, about 200 fish.

Another proposal, offered by Rep. Thomas Stanley, D-Waltham, would phase out commercial fishing for striped bass by 2025 and establish fines up to $500 per fish for violators of new regulations.

"We're asking for only one saltwater species to be reserved for recreational purposes and protected as a gamefish," said Fred Jennings of Ipswich, who is the Massachusetts co-chairman of Stripers Forever, a recreational angler advocacy group. "And it's one of vital importance to the economy of our state."

Mike Spinney, a Stripers Forever board member, said a black market for striped bass is "thriving" along the coast, with poachers hauling in fish under cover of darkness.

 That's been a well known problem in Maryland as well.

Fisheries managers have become overwhelmed by the illegal striper market, he told members of the Legislature's Committee on the Environment, Natural Resources and Agriculture on Wednesday.

"The lax commercial regulations and lack of enforcement is why so many people feel at liberty to break the law by selling to unscrupulous dealers, markets and restaurants," he said. "In one case, a refrigerated truck was driving up and down the Cape Cod canal, taking striped bass from a network of poachers, for sale, presumably, to the black market."

Of course, I occasionally fish for Striped Bass commercially with Walleye Pete. I do it for free, for the fun of catching many big stripers on light tackle. I even spend my own money on tackle.

Pete has always said he would prefer striper fishing in Maryland to be recreational only; although he can make more on a commercial day, over the course of a year, the recreational side of his business is much more important.

In general, the money spent by recreational fishermen on striper fishing far out weighs the economic value of the commercial fishery. God knows I'd save enormous amounts of money by buying the fish at Safeway.

Linked by EBL in "Christine Keeler RIP", "Gal Gadot in the IDF", "Virginia Mayo", "Who did they cast as Dr. Smith in the reboot of Lost In Space?", "Candace Owens and conservative truth",  "Dina Habib Powell is leaving the Trump Administration" and "Gropey Dustin Hoffman?" Wombat-socho has "Rule Five Sunday: Snow Bunnies" up and at 'em.

Maryland Lawmakers Weigh Ray Ban

Legislation proposes banning cownose ray hunting tournaments

Groups advocating against the competitive killing of cownose rays in the Chesapeake Bay are asking state legislators to end the practice.

Animal rights organizations, including the Humane Society, Animal Welfare Institute and the Save the Rays coalition, on Tuesday testified in favor of Senate Bill 268, which would ban cownose ray fishing tournaments in state waters.

The tournaments first attracted public attention in 2015 after advocates released graphic video of a bowfishing contest in which fishermen shot rays with arrows, hit them with clubs and weighed them before dumping them back into the water.

Not my favorite form of fishing, especially since Georgia sold my bow and arrows to buy a vacuum cleaner, but what ever floats your boat. Brooke certainly makes it look appealing.

"These events are inhumane, wasteful and ecologically destructive," Kathryn Kullberg, director of marine and wildlife protection for the Humane Society, told the Senate's Education, Health and Environmental Matters committee. "This is not something that Maryland should be known for."

Several groups representing fishermen, meanwhile, cautioned against a blanket prohibition on competitive fishing of the rays.

"It's no different from the other tournaments, and it's very detrimental to the watermen," said Bruce Bereano, a lobbyist for the Chesapeake Bay Commercial Fishermen's Association, which is opposed to the bill. "It would be like (telling) a farmer you can't shoot deer who are eating all your crops."

Cownose Rays are the ugly step sister of Chesapeake Bay fish. Unappetizing, although edible, they are not sought for the table. Hooked on tackle, they put up a strong, steady, but unexciting fight, for which you're generally grateful if you can get the tackle back.  They enter the Bay in huge numbers in spring, to have their young (they bear live babies) and have sex, and to graze on the bay's bottom dwellers. Opinions differ on whether they are a significant impediment to oyster recovery, but they can certainly eat them, and a lot of rays could eat a lot of them.

Before you ban a certain type of fishing, you should at least study the population to see whether the level of harvest is likely to be seriously affected by the added mortality. I see no evidence that this is being considered.

Wombat-socho has the grand "Rule 5 Sunday: The Humiliation Of Roger Goodell" ready at The Other McCain.