Thursday, November 30, 2006

4th Circuit: Federal Spam Law Pre-empts State Law

A November 27 National Law Journal article (subcription) entitled "Ruling Trims Reach of State Anti-'Spam' Laws" reports on a recently published 4th Circuit decision, Omega World Travel v. Mummagraphics, which ruled that the federal CAN-SPAM law pre-empts state spam laws. The case is the first federal appellate ruling to limit the reach of state spam laws. In this case, the Court ruled that the federal act partially limits Oklahoma's spam law allowing damages.

Wednesday, November 29, 2006

Court of Appeals To Begin Airing Webcasts

Following on my post from a few days about the Court of Appeals beginning to provided selected briefs online, this Baltimore Sun article reports that the Court has now decided to begin airing webcasts of oral arguments. The Court's website already contains a page about the webcasts. The page states that the Court's first webcast is scheduled for Thursday, Nov. 30. The page further states "Webcasts will be archived and made available on this site a few hours after the conclusion of the last argument scheduled each day." Unclear is whether the Court plans to webcast all oral arguments, or selective cases. (Once again, thanks Scott Stevens from the Baltimore County Law Library for this).

If you're looking for webcasts for the Maryland legislature, you won't find any. But, since 2000, the Maryland General Assembly has posted audio recordings on the MGA website of House and Senate proceedings from the legislature's most recent session. The MGA also has audio taped recordings of Senate floor debate archived back to 1992. Contact the Department of Legislative Services for obtaining copies of these tapes.

Thursday, November 16, 2006

Court of Appeals Briefs Online

To be sure, the Court of Appeals has a way to go (if ever) before placing all of its briefs online, but it has taken a small step by deciding to place briefs of selected "highlighted cases" online. For example, briefs for the same-sex marriage case, Conaway v. Deane, scheduled for December 4, are now online. This latest action by the Maryland Judiciary seems to follow a trend for courts throughout Maryland: a little while ago, we noted that the Baltimore City Courts had begun placing selected "high profile" opinions online. (Thanks to Scott Stevens from the Baltimore County Law Library for this catch).

Thursday, November 09, 2006

The 20 Largest Companies In Baltimore

So you're asked to find a listing of the 20 largest (by revenue) companies in Baltimore. Sure, you say, that sounds simple enough. So you hop on Google but, surpisingly, this isn't as easy a question as it seemed. In fact, as far as I can tell, there doesn't seem to be a readily available site on the net which provides this info. So, where did I go? The Baltimore Business Journal annually publishes The Book of Lists which gives you listings of the largest companies in Baltimore for various fields (including a listing for the largest law firms). The book includes a list of the "Largest Public Companies In Baltimore." The only tricky part is that some of the largest companies in Baltimore are private. Thankfully, the book provides a separate list of the "Largest Private Companies In Baltimore." To come up with a true listing of the "20 Largest Companies" you'll have to pull info from both lists to compile a third list.