Allied Bail Bonds v. State

GILBERT, Chief Judge. This Court in One 1983 Toyota v. State, 63 Md.App. 208 , 492 A.2d 643 (1985), dismissed an appeal because of the failure of the appellant to comply with Md. Rule 1028, i.e., to provide a record extract. The Court noted that a forfeiture proceeding is civil in nature. It is, we said, an action in rem (against the “thing”).

We were concerned in One 1983 Toyota that attorneys were being led astray by the captioning of the forfeiture action, and we published One 1983 Toyota in order to focus a procedural beacon on forfeiture claims. One 1983 Toyota involved a vehicle having a value of approximately $16,000. The car was seized by the State after a small amount of a controlled dangerous substance was found in the automobile. We did not consider the propriety of the seizure of the Toyota because no record extract was furnished.

Md. Rule 1028b, we observed, mandates that in civil cases the record extract shall contain “such parts of the record as may reasonably be necessary for the determination of the questions presented by the appeal.” The effect of a failure to comply with Rule 1028b, simply stated, is: no sufficient record extract, no review. It is almost, but not quite, with a sense of deja vu that we examine the instant case. Here the “thing” is not a Toyota but a bail bond. There the dissimilarity ends because, but for the nomenclature of the “thing” involved, we travel the path we trod in One 1983 Toyota .

On behalf of Timothy Wiggins, Allied Bail Bonds posted a bail bond in the penalty sum of $25,000. Wiggins had been indicted by the Grand Jury for Montgomery County for breaking and entering a dwelling during the daytime (Md. Ann.Code art. 27, § 30b) and for theft of goods having a value of less than $300.00 (Md.Ann.Code art. 27, § 342). ⁷⁵⁶ Because of charges pending in Washington, D.C., Wiggins’s defense