Mark Oakley

Mark W. Oakley is an established litigation attorney concentrating on civil litigation, personal injury, construction law, and criminal and traffic defense. He also advises business clients, negotiates and drafts contracts, and handles a variety of litigation matters at all levels of the state and federal court systems. Mr. Oakley is trained and certified in the collaborative practice of law. Mr. Oakley is a graduate of the University of Maryland School of Law (J.D. 1987), and the University of Maryland, College Park (B.A. 1984). He is a member of the Maryland State Bar Association, the District of Columbia Bar, and the Bar Association of Montgomery County. He is admitted to practice before the Court of Appeals of Maryland, the District of Columbia Court of Appeals, the United States District Court for the District of Maryland, the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, and the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. Authored the winning brief in the case of 1986 Mercedes v. State of Maryland, a precedent-setting decision limiting the State’s power to forfeit private property.

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• Contingent Fees
  I handle personal injury claims on a contingent fee basis, meaning if there is no recovery, you do not owe me a legal fee.

District of Columbia

District of Columbia Bar

Since 1989

Maryland

Since 1988

University of Maryland - Baltimore

J.D. (1987) | Law

1984 - 1987

University of Maryland - College Park

B.A. (1984) | English

1980 - 1984

District of Columbia Bar

Member

1989 - Current

Maryland State Bar Association

Member

1988 - Current

Bar Association of Montgomery County

Member

1988 - Current

Q. Can a lawsuit assume a trust if a co-trustee is sued?

October 3, 2024

A: No, the assets of the trust cannot be attached or reached based upon a judgment entered against a trustee, who is not also the grantor of the trust, and who otherwise has no discretionary right to make distributions from the trust to herself for any reason. In your description, I assume your mother is the granor of the trust, having transferred her assets into her revocable living trust, and simply named herself and you two daughters as co-trustees. A co-trustee does not own the assets in the trust. A trustee is simply a fiducuary agent acting on behalf of the trust for the purposes set forth in the trust -- in this case, the care of your mother. Your mother as grantor is the one with the authority to revoke the trust of take assets out of it for her own use at any time.

Upon your mother's death, however, the trust likely has a distribution provision that distributes what's left in the trust to named beneficiaries, which I assume are you and your sister. At that point, a judgment entered against your sister may subject her individual share to potential attachment by her creditors, but not any other distributive share, unless she was not entitled to immediate access to the funds. It is possible to draft the trust to limit your sister's right to receive distributions from the trust, which would preclude the creditor from attaching her funds, at least those funds that are not paid over to her personal name. For instance, the trust could be writeen to allow the trustee to pay your sister's rent, car payments, insurance premiums, etc., directly and not to her, so the funds never get placed into her

name, thereby keeping them from the reach of her creditors. ... Read More

Q. Is it probable cause to search car due to previous search of car, Marijuana found about a month before it became legal.

October 1, 2024

A: No, the prior incident does not provide probable cause to search your vehicle in this incident. The remedy for an illegal search is suppression of the evidence at trial if you were charged with a criminal offense based on what they found.

If they found nothing, and you are just upset that they delayed and inconvenienced (and maybe embarassed and humiliated) you by conducting a fruitless search without probable cause, then your remedy is purely civil in nature, based on a civil rights violation. The monetary worth of your claim would be rather minimal, and the time, effort and expense involved to bring the claim would most likely not interest an attorney. You can file a complaint with the Sheriff's Department about the deputies involved, or with any civilian police complaint review board that has jurisdiction over the Sheriff's office, which might result in internal discipilinary action; or contact the ACLU or the NAACP, as both organizations track these sorts of stops and may file a class action suit if enough complaints establish a systematic policy by this law enforcement agency which regularly violates citizens' constitutional rights. ... Read More

Q. What form do I use to file an Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress lawsuit?

October 1, 2024

A: If you are suing for not more than $30,000 and do not want a jury trial, then you can file in District Court (trials are before a judge only), and you can use a District Court civil complaint form, and check the "tort" box. The forms are available online or at the courthouse. It's a fill-in-the-blank form, but it is generic with a large space for setting forth the claim, which you can attach additional sheets to if needed. There is no form for particular causes of action like intentional infliction of emotional distress.

If you want to sue for more than $30,000, and believe you can support a larger damage claim, or if you want a jury trial, then you must file in the Circuit Court and demand more than $15,000, but it is sufficient to simply claim damages "in excess of $75,000" rather than name a larger specific sum. There are no pre-printed court forms in Circuit Court. You must type your "complaint for damages" from scratch. If you want a jury trial, you must file a separately signed request for a trial by jury together with your complaint in circuit court.

You name the defendant and identify their address for service of process. You must plead sufficient facts, including time and place of each act that you alege the defendant committed, sufficient to put the defendant on notice of the basis of your claims and when and where they occurred. You must also allege particular facts that would meet each "element" of the cause of action known as "intentional infliction of emotional distress." In Maryland, that tort reqires that you allege facts that, if proven, would establish the following:

(1) The conduct at issue was intentional or reckless;

(2) the conduct was extreme and outrageous;

(3) there is causal connection between the extreme and outrageous conduct and the resultant distress; and

(4) the emotional distress is severe.

You do not have to allege all evidence that you have, but it must be sufficient to support a finding that each listed element is met. Failure to do so could result in dismissal for failure to state a claim. Maryland's highest court has observed that an award of damages for this tort should be imposed sparingly and “reserved for those wounds that are truly severe and incapable of healing themselves." The severity of some emotional distress is obvious (attacked with a hammer and suffering grievous wounds; having your pet torn from your arms and thrown into traffic), but less obvious forms, like post truamatic stress disorder from being subjected to abuse, may require more details, and generally may be supported by a claim that you received professional psychiatric or psychological assessment, diagnosis and treatment.

It is rare to file a suit based solely on this particular tort. Oftentimes the conduct will meet the elements of other torts, such as assault or battery, for example, which is easier to prove. Each alleged tort is its own "cause of action" and is set forth in a separately numbered "count" in a "complaint" (Count 1, Count 2, etc.), and will often share the same set of facts, so they are often preceded in the complaint with a secton labeled "factual allegations common to all counts." A plaintiff is entitled to only one recovery, regardless of the number of causes of action alleged, so you can prevail on any or all counts in your complaint, but damages are calculated only once for the all inuries you are claiming. Generally, you end the complaint with a paragraph requesting your monetary relief.

If your case is viable (meaning, the facts both support the causes of action alleged, and support a significant and provable amount of monetary damages), then it should interest a personal injury lawyer willing to take it on a contingency basis. Filing, presenting and proving cases like these are not easy, and legal representation is strongly advised, although not all attorneys handle intentional torts. ... Read More