Opinion
PANEL: MARBURY, C.J., DELAPLAINE, COLLINS, GRASON, HENDERSON and MARKELL, JJ.
COLLINS, J.
This is an appeal by Wilbur Rogers, a retired Army Colonel,
born December 28, 1885, who states that he is a resident of this State,
from an adverse report of the Maryland State Board of Law
Examiners on his application for
admission to the Maryland Bar without examination. Under Rule 14 of the
rules adopted by this Court in conformity with the provisions of
Sections 1 to 8, inclusive, of Article 10 of the Annotated Code of
Maryland, (1939, Flack's Edition), the Board found that the applicant
was of good moral character and that every letter of communication so
reported. The Board, however, also found that he had not been engaged
in the active and continuous practice of law for five years in the
District of Columbia prior to the filing of his application on January
3, 1945, as required by Rule 14 aforesaid. This rule requires a
practitioner to actively and continuously engage as a practitioner or
teacher of the law, or judge, in one of the States, (including the
District of Columbia), of Page 739
the United States, for at least five years before the filing of
the petition. See Edmonds v. Webb, 182
Md. 60, 32 A.2d 702.
The question for our decision is whether from the information
before us the petitioner was actively and continuously engaged as a
practitioner of law in the District of Columbia for the period from
January 3, 1940 to January 3, 1945, when his petition was filed. He had
an office in his residence in Washington, D.C. from November 14, 1939
to January 1st, 1941. He had desk space in a large general office in
the Bond Building in Washington for a period from December 10th, 1942
to January 1st, 1943. He occupied an office in the Bond Building from
January 1st, 1943 to January 31st, 1944. He had a mailing address
without an office in the Bond Building in Washington for the period
beginning February 1st, 1944 until September 30th, 1944. Therefore in
the District of Columbia he had no office from January 1st, 1941 until
December 10th, 1942, only a mailing address from February 1st, 1944 to
September 30th, 1944, and no office from September 30th, 1944 to
January 3rd, 1945. During a part of that five year period he had also
been engaged as an insurance solicitor, which cannot be classified as
the practice of law. The information before us shows that his practice
during that period was more or less of a desultory nature consisting of
a few cases, none of which apparently were tried in Court, and an
occasional consultation, and some debt collections.
We must therefore conclude that the petitioner was not "actively
and continuously engaged in the practice of law" under the usual and
general meaning of those words for the period from January 3rd, 1940 to
January 3rd, 1945. The action of the Board of Law Examiners
in this case is affirmed. The petitioner, of course, will be allowed to
take the Maryland Bar examination upon meeting the requirements
thereof.