U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Maryland will have 7

Daily Record, The (Baltimore), Jul 28, 2005 by Daniel Ostrovsky

The U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Maryland - long the highest-volume bankruptcy court in the 4th U.S. Circuit - is about to get some sweet relief, courtesy of a newly enacted federal law.

In accordance with the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005, three new judicial vacancies - two in Greenbelt and one in Baltimore - have been created on the court, bringing the total to seven.

Since 1994, we have had more than a 100 percent increase in the case level and no additional positions, said Duncan W. Keir, who will assume the role of chief judge in September.

You can only work long hours under high stress for so long before it takes its toll, Keir said.

Judges on the court often have to work on weekends and holidays to keep up with cases before them, said Clerk of Court Mark D. Sammons.

The number of cases peaked at around 35,000 in 1998 and again in 2002, and has hovered around the 30,000 mark in recent years.

There were times during this period where our judges had the highest case load per judge if not the highest in the nation, said Sammons.

According to Keir, one consequence of the court's heavy workload is that cases sometimes take close to a year to be put on the calendar.

Timeliness of getting a decision can affect the economic recovery of the debtor or recovery by creditors; delay can be harmful to either one side or the other or both, frankly, said Keir.

Sammons points to a longer-term effect: The judges, just because of the economies of time, were unable to write as many opinions as they would have desired to write, as opposed to simply [issuing] an order, he said.

That may, in turn, have created more work for the court.

[The judges] may have been able to educate all of the attorneys and citizens of Maryland on how bankruptcy is administered and interpreted here and maybe prevent some legal actions from coming up, said Sammons.

Nationwide, no new bankruptcy judgeships have been added since 1992.

In Maryland, the quest for an additional judge began in 1994, when a formula employed by the Judicial Conference of the United States and the Administrative Office of the Courts recommended one additional slot.

The latest recommendation of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and the Judicial Conference called for the addition of four new judges.

The Judicial Conference - made up of chief circuit judges, the chief judge of the Court of International Trade, and district judge representatives from every circuit - made its recommendation to Congress, which created the vacancies as part of the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act.

Sammons believes that the panel in charge of filling the vacancies will look for someone with the credentials similar to Judge Nancy V. Alquist, the newest member of the court.

Alquist had extensive experience in private practice as a partner in Ballard, Spahr, Andrews & Ingersoll LLP. She served as the president of the Bankruptcy Bar Association for the District of Maryland and the Federal Bar Association before joining the court in 2004 (the same year she was named by The Daily Record as one of Maryland's Top 100 Women).

Keir stressed that he is not a member of the screening panel to fill the current vacancies, but added that a new judge also could be picked from academia.

Bankruptcy court judges serve 14-year terms and do not have to be approved by the Senate.

They are recommended by a screening panel - in this case consisting of representatives of the 4th Circuit, the Maryland bar, the dean of a law school, judges of the district court, and at least one judge from Maryland's bankruptcy court - and eventually approved by the full 4th Circuit.

Applications for the new vacancies, which pay $149,132 annually, must be made by Aug. 22.