Appeal of Rogers

• Decision Date: 05 February 1946
• Parties: Appeal of ROGERS.
• Court: Maryland Court of Appeals

83 A.2d 517

192 Md. 737

Appeal of ROGERS.

Court of Appeals of Maryland.

February 5, 1946

Wilbur Rogers, pro se.

Parsons Newman, Frederick, Md., for the State Board.

Before MARBURY, C J., and DELAPLAINE, COLLINS, GRASON, HENDERSON and MARKELL JJ.

COLLINS, Judge.

This is an appeal by Wilbur Rogers, a retired Army Colonel, born December 28 1885, who states that he is a resident of this State, from an adverse report of the Maryland State Board of Law Examiners on his application for admission to the Maryland Bar without examination. Under Rule 14 of the rules adopted by this Court in conformity with the provisions of Sections 1 to 8 inclusive, of Article 10 of the Annotated Code of Maryland (1939, Flack's Edition), the Board found that the applicant was of good moral character and that every letter of communication so reported. The Board, however, also found that he had not been engaged in the active and continuous practice of law for five years in the District of Columbia prior to the filing of his application on January 3, 1945, as required by Rule 14 aforesaid. This rule requires a practitioner to actively and continuously engage as a practitioner or teacher of the law, or judge, in one of the States (including the District of Columbia), of the United States, for at least five years before the filing of the petition. See Edmonds v. Webb, 182 Md. 60, 32 A.2d 702.

The question for our decision is whether from the information before us the petitioner was actively and continuously engaged as a practitioner of law in the District of Columbia for the period from January 3, 1940 to January 3, 1945, when his petition was filed. He had an office in his residence in Washington, D. C. from November 14, 1939 to January 1, 1941. He had desk space in a large general office in the Bond Building in Washington for a period from December 10, 1942 to January 1, 1943. He occupied an office in the Bond Building from January 1, 1943 to January 31, 1944. He had a mailing address without an office in the Bond Building in Washington for the period beginning February 1, 1944 until September 30 1944. Therefore in the District of Columbia he had no office from January 1, 1941 until December 10, 1942, only a mailing address from February 1, 1944 to September 30, 1944, and no office from September 30, 1944 to January 3, 1945. During a part of that five year period he had also been engaged as an insurance solicitor, which...