Court Opinion

ID: 9645799
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 21:35:49.749535+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:11:31.712615
License: Public Domain

CATHELL, J.,
dissenting:
I respectfully dissent. Judge Eldridge writes separately in concurrence because the majority declines to overrule Makovi v. Sherwin-Williams Co., 316 Md. 603, 561 A.2d 179 (1989), and its progeny. I write in dissent because the majority fails to apply the holding of Makovi v. Sherwin-Williams Co., supra.
I do agree with most of Judge Eldridge’s statement that [t]he majority today circumvents this Court’s ... opinion in Makovi v. Sherwin-Williams Co., supra, by stating that the holding in that case was more limited than the language of the opinion, and by the strained route of relying on the criminal statute making it unlawful “[t]o engage in prostitution .... ”
Normally, I might be inclined to defer to the majority’s apparently superior academic knowledge of the subject matter, but, under its reasoning, a person declining a sexual entreaty “until the ring is on my finger,” is a prostitute or a person requesting sexual activity, promising marriage, or any number of other things in return, is soliciting prostitution. With its opinion, the majority, by logical inferential extension, has, I fear, turned millions of Marylanders into prostitutes or those who solicit prostitution.
Whatever the majority and others think prostitution is, this, in vernacular language, “ain’t it.”
I would reverse.
Judge HARRELL has authorized me to state that he joins in the views expressed herein.