Law v. John Hanson Sav. and Loan, Inc.

• Decision Date: 11 May 1979
• Docket Number: No. 1093,1093
• Citation: Law v. John Hanson Sav. and Loan, Inc., 400 A.2d 1154, 42 Md.App. 505 (Md. App. 1979)
• Parties: Gertrude LAW v. JOHN HANSON SAVINGS AND LOAN, INC., et al.
• Court: Court of Special Appeals of Maryland

Page 505

42 Md.App. 505

400 A.2d 1154

Gertrude LAW v.JOHN HANSON SAVINGS AND LOAN, INC., et al.

No. 1093.

Court of Special Appeals of Maryland.

May 11, 1979.

Leroy Handwerger, Baltimore, for appellant.

Carlton M. Green, Hyattsville, and Richard C. Daniels, Mount Rainier, with whom were Josef B. Brown and Reichelt, Nussbaum, Brown & Topf, Mount Rainier, on brief, for appelleeJohn Hanson Savings and Loan, Inc.

L. Dale Burgmeier, Annapolis, with whom was William A. Franch, Annapolis, on brief, for other appellees.

Argued before MELVIN, WILNER and COUCH, JJ.

WILNER, Judge.

Melissa J. Rowe is 89 years old.She formerly lived in Davidsonville, in Anne Arundel County, but she now is in a nursing home.She has six children five daughters and a son.

In January, 1974, with Melissa's written consent, and with the express or tacit consent of her other children, Melissa's son Marvin petitioned the Circuit Court for Anne Arundel County to have Melissa declared a person under disability and to have himself appointed as guardian of her property.Melissa was alleged to suffer from "generalized arteriosclerosis with infirmity and cerebral arteriosclerosis with intermittent cerebral insufficiency", an allegation that was supported by the certificates of two physicians.Her disability was alleged to be a physical rather than a mental one; and, upon Melissa's consent, her nomination of Marvin as guardian, and the two physician's certificates, the court made the requested declaration and appointment.Most of Melissa's property at the time consisted of about 90 acres of land in Anne Arundel County having a value of some $150,000.That is what everyone seems to be fighting about.

In June, 1975, appellant, one of Melissa's daughters, filed a lengthy petition (which she amended in November, 1975) seeking (1) removal of her brother as guardian, (2) an accounting, (3) recission of certain deeds of trust and releases, (4) to have her brother, her nephew, the lawyers who represented Melissa and the guardian, and others made "partiesdefendant" in the proceeding, and (5) other relief.In this petition and amended petitionappellant made a number of allegations of very serious wrongdoing which, If true, would not only warrant removal of the guardian, but would likely justify a variety of civil proceedings and possibly criminal action against a number of other people as well.She accused her nephew (Melissa's grandson) of converting Melissa's assets to his own use; she accused several lawyers of most serious conflicts of interest and both active and passive complicity in schemes to defraud Melissa and to misappropriate her assets; and she accused her brother of mismanagement, conflict of interest, and worse.

These petitions touched off a proceeding, or series of proceedings, that dragged on over a three-year period before four judges of the circuit court, and produced a record (excluding depositions and transcripts of hearings) exceeding 1,630 pages.The end of all this came on May 22, 1978, when the court dismissed appellant's petition against all defendants With prejudice.What is before us, of course, is the correctness of that action; and, to resolve that issue, we must consider who and what was before the circuit court.

Notwithstanding the assertion in her petition and amended petition that she was acting on behalf of her mother, her brother and sisters, and herself, appellant maintained throughout most of the proceeding that she was acting as a statutory "interested person" solely on behalf of Melissa and the guardianship estate, and not in her own interest.But in that limited capacity of "interested person", she filed exceptions to accounts and reports prepared by the court auditor, as well as extensive interrogatories, demurrers, motions for summary judgment, requests for subpoenas duces tecum, and a host and variety of other pleadings of one type or another.Through counsel, she participated in the taking of depositions and in at least three hearings in open court, all conducted at her request.When her nephew, one of those persons named by her as a "partydefendant" went into bankruptcy, she requested and received leave to file a claim in the bankruptcy on behalf of her mother and the guardianship estate.It is fair to say that the entire proceeding in the circuit court, from beginning to end, was occasioned by and was in response to the charges leveled by appellant.

In the course of these protracted proceedings, and in large part through the discovery efforts of appellant, a mass of documents was brought before the court.Some of these documents were merely placed routinely in the court file, as appendages to pleadings of one type or another; others were more directly brought to the court's attention, and even placed in evidence at one of the several hearings conducted along the way.In November, 1976, at a hearing on certain law motions then pending, including appellant's exceptions to the auditor's report, appellant had two groups of documents pertaining to the 1974 deed of trust sought to be annulled admitted into evidence in support of her exceptions.

In June, 1977, appellant filed with the court a 46-page "Statement of Facts"(supplemented by a 2-page "Supplemental Statement of Facts") to which was appended 143 pages of exhibits laying out in great detail all of the alleged wrongdoings on the part of the various peopleshe caused to be named as defendants in the matter.

A month later, a hearing was held with respect to some of the staggering array of pleadings and motions then open.At that hearing, the court observed that the allegations set forth in appellant's pleadings were serious ones and would have to be answered.They sufficed, said the court, to shift the burden to the "defendants" to show that their actions had been proper ones; and that would require a hearing on the merits I. e., to determine whether appellant's charges were, in fact, valid.In connection with that hearing, the court also noted that appellant"would have to introduce formally at the hearing those matters that constitute the file.They would have to be introduced as exhibits."Counsel for appellant, apparently in recognition of this requirement, offered the originals of his various exhibits at this "preliminary" hearing, but was told, "Why don't we wait until the hearing on the merits and then do that.We'll just clog up our files with them . . . ."¹

On at least two occasions, appellant had formally asked the court to appoint a guardian Ad litem for Melissa, and periodically bemoaned the fact that this had not been done.On January 3, 1978, the court appointed "counsel" for Melissa, but that appointment was rescinded shortly thereafter.Instead, on January 25, 1978, Appellant was appointed as guardian Ad litem, and her attorney was appointed as counsel for her, as such guardian.In this new capacity, appellant promptly filed a 17-page motion seeking summary judgment that the two deeds of trust were null and void.²While pursuing all of these requests for affirmative relief, including, as noted, the filing of extensive interrogatories, she resisted any effort on the part of the defendants to engage in their own discovery, in particular refusing to answer interrogatories served upon her.Her defense seemed to be that she was not a "party" upon whom interrogatories could be served.When the court ruled that she would have to answer the interrogatories, her counsel sent a letter to the court(with a copy to the Commission on Judicial Disabilities but not to other counsel)"formally resign(ing) as a natural and non-statutory individual party, specifically retaining all statutory positions to which she has been appointed or approved by Court Order."

Finally, after denial of several last-minute motions by appellant, trial was set for May 22, 1978.This proceeding commenced with appellant taking the stand and testifying that her mother was Mentally incompetent so detached from reality as to be unable even to receive notice of the trial.She offered letters from two physicians supporting that assertion.Her counsel, Jerome Piven, then advised the court and the assembled parties and their counsel: (1) of his great astonishment to learn that the office or position of guardian Ad litem that for which he had persistently pressed and ultimately obtained for his client had been abolished years earlier, and thus no longer existed in Maryland, ³ and that (2) his client, as a statutory interested person, was not a party, nor a representative of a party, and thus had no status in the case.Upon this basis, after three years of pleadings and hearings, all stemming from the petitions filed by him on behalf of appellant, he simply asked to be "excused from this case"" . . . I don't belong here.I have no power to act as an attorney here today . . . .I'm asking to be excused from this courtroom because I have no status . . . ."

Upon questioning by the court, Piven, in effect, said: Here are all these pleadings and exhibits; you, court, take care of the matter henceforth; I'm out of the case.He specifically declined to offer any further evidence in support of appellant's allegations no testimony, not the exhibits which had previously been marked and identified, not his "Statement of Facts" or the exhibits appended to it.In short, he left the court with no formal evidence (except perhaps the documents admitted into evidence at the November, 1976, hearing on exceptions to the auditor's report) to support his client's charges only some 1,600 pages of pleadings "for whatever use the Court wishes to make of (them)".At that point and upon that premise, the court granted...