CHEAP SHOTS – OCTOBER SURPRISES – End of Dorsey Legal Dynasty

CHEAP SHOTS OCTOBER SURPRISE

Lots of points to make with this
October Surprise Edition of
CHEAP SHOTS.

THE BATTLE ROYALE FOR JUDGESHIP ENDS,
ANOTHER ONE BEGINS

Who knew that in the same year that a historic election battle between a non-resident attorney who has spent most of the last twenty years practicing law in Calvert Court would be appointed to the St. Mary’s Circuit Court by Gov. Lockdown Larry Hogan and have to defend the treasured seat on the bench that yet another Judge position would become available. Condolences to the family and friends of the late Judge Mike Stamm are always in order, while condolences to the voters and taxpayers who are always suffering from the drama and battle for the honor of being appointed and keeping the much-vaunted seats of judicial power are also in order.

The decision of Sue Ann Armitage to contest the selection of Amy Lorenzini for the post of St. Mary’s County Circuit Court Judge provided so much grist for the cartoon mill that one will wonder when Norm presents his wife with framed copies of all the CHEAP SHOTS cartoons about and of the judge slugfest for hanging in her office.  Sue Ann says her favorite was the one showing her putting on boxing gloves and telling the Calvert Cutie to put ‘em up because she is going to Sock It To Her.  The cartoon that showed them both with claims of being the oldest was great, as most women lie, cheat, and steal away as many years as they can with makeup, girdles, hair dye, and nose jobs.

The cartoon that never appeared was the one showing Amy’s husband outfitting her car with a GPS tracker to learn where she has been…shopping….or whatever. That one seemed to be below the dignity of Editorial Cartoons, of which CHEAP SHOTS always maintains both the lowest and the highest standards. Just ask any elected official in Maryland.

DRAPE THE BENCH WITH BLACK CREPE

There were three judges, and now the Clock of Life has struck one, and we are down to two.  The two remaining are Amy and Joe Stanalonis. Stamm was a bit of a bourgeoisie administrator determined to provide a semblance of order in the legal world of the Walled City, which is virtually a wasteland of any real legal talent or brains.

THE VOID LEFT BY THE PASSING OF WALTER DORSEY

With Walter Dorsey gone since Dec. 6, 2009, he took to his grave the distinction of being one of the finest legal minds in Maryland. As recited in his obituary, “He received his law degree from The University of Maryland School of Law and graduated in 1951. At that time, individuals were ranked for their bar exam, and scores were given. There were 60 questions, all of which were essays, and Dorsey received a 282 out of 300, which was the highest grade on the bar exam throughout the State.”

Walter B. Dorsey served in the Army during the Korean War, then served as a State Senator, five terms as State’s Attorney, an Assistant Attorney General, and Deputy Public Defender for Maryland.

The truth was always counted upon from Walter Dorsey, including telling CHEAP SHOTS when asked a question of law, “I don’t know, but I will find out.”

The Dorsey family has produced good lawyers for over one hundred and twenty years, balancing out the hacks, crooks, mental midgets, ambulance chasers, impostors, and grifters who have all contributed to the color, fabric, and histrionics that are the lifeblood of any good Tabloid publication such as THE RAG and THE CHESAPEAKE TODAY.

THE RETIREMENT OF PHILIP H. DORSEY III

Sadly, today, the current repository of the Dorsey Legal Dynasty, Philip H. Dorsey III, has retired, as has his brother Paul Dorsey, who formerly was an accomplished lobbyist in Annapolis. St. Mary’s County has run out of Dorseys in the law business in Maryland.
Bryant M. Dorsey, a grandson of the late Walter B. Dorsey, served as an Assistant District Attorney at Brown County in Green Bay, Wisconsin, and is now in private practice in that state. Bryant is the son of John Michael Dorsey, who was a starting NFL Player at Green Bay and a General Manager of the Kansas City Chiefs and the Cleveland Browns, in addition to holding scouting and coaching positions with Seattle.

St. Mary’s State’s Attorney Walter Dorsey hired the recently departed Judge Mike Stamm to work for him as a prosecutor. Dorsey also hired prosecutors Stanalonis, Christy Chesser, and Jim Tanavage. They all became Judges.

Phil Dorsey established his legal empire in the former St. Peter’s Episcopal Church on Washington Street in The Walled City. Many called it St. Phil’s, while he called it home to his lawyer shop. His wife Donna operated a daycare facility for a time in the former Sunday School classrooms. Donna and Phil raised two sons, Robert, who lives in St. Mary’s County, and Walter B. Dorsey III, who was murdered in Inglewood, California.

Helen Dorsey said that her brother was groomed from birth to be a leading legal professional, as the great-grandson of a legislator, grandson, and namesake of Circuit Court Judge Phil Dorsey, and son of Senator Walter B. Dorsey and Helen’s strong-willed mother, Jeanne Blackistone Dorsey Mandel.

The front steps of St. Phil’s even served as the campaign stop for Attorney General Doug Gansler in his announcement for his 2014 campaign to become Maryland Governor.  Over the years, Phil Dorsey showed compassion, care, and intensity in representing his clients with honesty and clarity, demonstrating that he was the depository of the good character and fine brains of his father as well as his grandfather, Judge Phil Dorsey, and his great-grandfather Sen. Walter Dorsey.  The Dorsey’s were always challenged by the failure to think up new first names, so things don’t get sorted out too well until they show up in the graveyard.

Dorsey’s in the Maryland General Assembly:
HOUSE OF DELEGATES
1912 Walter B. Dorsey (D)
1931 Philip H. Dorsey, Jr. (D)
1933 Philip H. Dorsey, Jr. (D)
1936, December Special Session – Philip H. Dorsey, Jr. (D)
1937 Philip H. Dorsey, Jr. (D)
1937, April Special Session – Philip H. Dorsey, Jr. (D)
STATE SENATE
1939 Philip H. Dorsey, Jr. (D)
1941 Philip H. Dorsey, Jr. (D)
1959 Walter B. Dorsey (D)
1960 Walter B. Dorsey (D)
1961 Walter B. Dorsey (D)
1961, June Special Session -Walter B. Dorsey (D)
1962 Walter B. Dorsey (D)
1962, March Special Session – Walter B. Dorsey (D)
1962, May Special Session -Walter B. Dorsey (D)

While Phil Dorsey mined the riches of land opportunities for decades, showing stellar performance as a specialist in zoning and land use, he acquired and developed much of the growth in St. Mary’s and elsewhere, generating tracts of homes in which thousands now live, in apartments, townhouses, and single-family spacious dwellings where people exist comfortably but always in fear of tax-hiking politicians.  The land-endowed fat cats found Phil Dorsey to be just the one to handle their complexities of financial, government, and environmental obstacles.

In addition to land development, Phil, his late uncle John Rule Dorsey, and Walter Dorsey initiated the first Checkers restaurants in the region, building the business to about two dozen units in Virginia and Maryland. The restaurants were sold in the past year.

As Phil Dorsey retired, he sold his law firm as well, and the law firm’s website no longer contains his photo or names him as the founder. The firm deals only with personal injury claims as the proverbial ambulance chasers.

Those with very real problems, as small as they may be but essential to their lives, also found sympathy, solace, and assistance when knocking on the door of St. Phils. “Go to Phil Dorsey” was the advice given by older folks over and over to younger generations who needed a criminal defense attorney, a Social Security problem solved, medical malpractice representation, a will, a vigorous defense, or an offense involving personal injury in a crash on area highways.

The infamous El Toro II disaster that took three lives in the Potomac River as a goofball charter boat captain took twenty customers out on a failing wooden tub in gale force winds in search of Rockfish in December of 1993, and killing three of them in the process made headlines across the nation. Phil Dorsey went to bat for a widow and provided her with an outcome that was just.

As Phil worked over the years to meet the needs of his clients, he conducted continuing legal education for dozens of young lawyers. Many served as interns while in college and then as assistants in the law firm, learning and earning. Many have gone on to practice and gain solid careers.

Where Walter Dorsey tended to teach prosecutors and prepare them to be Judges, Phil Dorsey grew and groomed lawyers. One of Phil Dorsey’s interns became the finest legal mind in Maryland next to Walter B. Dorsey – that of John A. Mattingly Jr.

Instead of paraphrasing the biography of John Mattingly, it’s easier to accurately present the same by lifting it from his current employer’s website in Calvert County, where he serves as the Assistant County Attorney while continuing to reside in Breton Bay.
 John Mattingly, attorney, holds a B.S. in Biology and History from Towson University and a Juris Doctorate from the University of Baltimore.  He has been with the County Attorney’s Office since May 2017.  Prior to that, he was a litigator in private practice. His experience includes hundreds of civil and criminal jury trials, hearings, administrative proceedings, and appellate cases from which he earned jury verdict award records, numerous acquittals, and won appeals.  He has been counsel in 10 published/reported opinions in state and federal courts (including the United States Supreme Court). Mattingly has taught Law and Public Policy at The University of Maryland, University College. He has further held numerous leadership and advisory positions within the Maryland State Bar Association and various charitable, professional, political, and civic organizations.

Old folks, you know who you are, will remember Fayrene Mattingly, his grandmother and one of the Leonardtown and Lexington Park business community stalwarts with her and her husband Booker’s Ideal Cleaners and two locations of The Fashion Center and her work as a volunteer with St. Mary’s Hospital Auxiliary. 
Only the immature pundits believe the selection of a judge is non-partisan, bipartisan or ethical. The Executive Order handed down by the Marxist Wes Moore to detail how the current vacancy will be filled is more muck, not that CHEAP SHOTS minds. Muck is one of the most renewable resources of Maryland’s crooked politicians. A Democrat will be appointed. There is a black female Democrat lawyer in Leonardtown, Marsha Williams, who couldn’t even win a seat on the school board and is currently the chief honcho of the NAACP in St. Mary’s County. Drooling Wes has his brain working overtime. He can appoint her, but will she be able to convince voters to keep her?

Moore will be drooling over how to appoint her, and if she isn’t on a list submitted by the new-to-be-appointed Judicial Nominating Commission, watch him send the list back to have “others” appointed until her name goes up to Annapolis. The crowd at Baldwin-Briscoe, who had members of the predecessor firm, Briscoe, Kenney & Kaminetz, all appointed judges due to the influence of the late Sen. J. Frank Raley Jr., might believe they have the inside track. But the top names of the firm are rather long in the tooth to get a judgeship, and while they deserve an honorable mention for failing ever to get disbarred like so many other lawyers in St. Mary’s County, they are suitably plain to get the nod.

Dan Slade is a Democrat and ran for House of Delegates, losing to Republican Matt Morgan in 2014. With his plea deal machine of Fritz out of action, who knows, he might want to toss his name in the hat. His daddy was a delegate until J. Frank got $pendening to put Del. John Slade on the District Court.

Phil Dorsey gained access to power centers near the old port town of Annapolis when his late mother became the First Lady of Maryland upon her marriage to Governor Marvin Mandel in 1974. A close relationship remained to the day Mandel died when he was stricken with a heart attack in the parking lot of Phil Dorsey’s waterfront cottage at Harbor View on Coombs Creek. Mandel died after spending the day with grandchildren and eating crabs in the cottage. Governor Mandel was often at events hosted by Phil at the nearby Fitzies Marina.

PREPARING THE OLD SAUSAGE GRINDER TO CREATE A NEW JUDGE
WITH MARXIST MOORE’S NEW EDICTS

The mechanism to provide a new Judge starts with the Judicial Nominating Commission for Calvert, and St. Mary’s is in the process of being refurbished with a new set of kingmakers. How in the world did St. Mary’s County wind up with two female judges since 2002 without Gov. Wes Moore’s new executive order?
The Marxist Governor of Maryland rescinded the Executive Order of 2005 and set in place his own new law on how the Commission shall be appointed. This law included new DEI language that has produced two female judges in St. Mary’s County since 2002, perhaps leading to the appointment of a new male judge who wears a skirt and uses the ladies’ room.

Wes Moore’s New Edicts for Picking DEI Judges