Where do state troopers turn when they need help?
For 27 years, it’s been Warnken
By Mike Grogan
Special to Warnken, LLC
Marylanders often turn to the state police when they find themselves in trouble.
For the 2,629 active and retired members of the Maryland Troopers Association, Warnken LLC is where they’ve been turning for legal help since 1998. The law firm represents association members in disputes with the state police agency over discipline, workers’ compensation claims, disability and retirement benefits, shootings, will drafting and a host of workplace grievances.
Troopers know they can call 1-800 Warnken anytime day or night and get help which is free through their association membership. But the MTA members probably do not know the pivotal role they played in the law firm’s growth and mission. From its early days of representing law enforcement and handling criminal law, the firm evolved into one of the state’s premier injury law firms.
Managing partner Byron B. Warnken credits the state police with playing a pivotal role in that evolution. “In many ways, they were a springboard for the firm and the springboard into moving us into injury work,” he said.
WARNKEN INJURY LAWYERS: 443-RESULTS
THE EARLY DAYS
That transformation began nearly three decades ago with Warnken ‘s father and Maryland legal legend, Professor Byron L. Warnken. The senior Warnken won an injunction against a police agency for violating an officer’s rights.
That legal battle sparked his curiosity about the police and the challenges they face on the job. Professor Warnken wrote an 86-page law review article that has since been cited in Supreme Court briefs, federal and state trial and appellate courts, and Congress.
Warnken and his firm went on to represent officers in 30 federal, state and local agencies. He became a national expert. His son recalls Warnken being a keynote speaker for the National Association of Police Organizations. Bill Clinton was also featured at the event.
The senior Warnken continued to represent criminal defendants while defending police in the workplace. “I mean they’re so diamertrically opposed in so many ways – those two concepts.” his son recently marveled. That improbable blend of clients also caught the attention of the Maryland media. The Daily Record in 1995 wrote a cover story, “Warnken: Making a Career Defending Cops and Robbers.”
The elder Warnken did not see the combination as conflicting. He believed society benefits when all clients – and maybe police especially – are well represented. “What I like best about representing police is that they are the fine line between an orderly society and chaos,” Warnken said in a video interview before his death in 2022. “And when they have complications in their lives it makes the ability to do that job for all of us more difficult. We help them through those issues.”
THE WARNKEN STRATEGY
Warnken’s strategy was to better define the protections afforded police officers under Maryland’s Law Enforcement Officers’ Bill of Rights. In 1974, Maryland became the first state in the nation to enact a bill of rights for law enforcement officers.
In its infancy, the law was broad, sometimes vague, in stating how its protections apply to cops in everyday real-life situations.
A law professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law from 1978 to 2018, the elder Warnken often teamed with former students to bring court actions to ensure the law guaranteed accused cops were represented at every stage of discipline, including the initial conversations with supervisors. He fought back after the state of Maryland re-opened a hearing to present new evidence after the procedure had been closed and deliberations begun. He argued the trooper’s rights were violated when the state got more time after initially failing to meet its burden of proof.
His son said his father recognized the protections or guardrails under the bill of rights were not fully established until they were spelled out and affirmed in the courts. “It was pliable until it got challenged,” the son said. “And once it gets challenged, that’s when it becomes iron-clad and they know they can’t violate it. So our work over time is what hardened the guardrails of LEOBR.”
A PROMISE MADE AND KEPT
Byron B. Warnken said his father made a vow as part of his pitch to become general counsel in 1998 for the Maryland Troopers Association: “We’re going to spoil you so much you’ll never look anywhere else for your lawyer.”
Warnken kept that promise by being a full-service law firm for the association. Since 1998, it has handled 3,287 cases for MTA members, covering 237 disability retirement matters, 2,010 internal discipline issues, 284 wills, 453 grievances and 303 general matters.
Rebecca L. Smith, a Warnken partner, is the firm’s fifth MTA attorney and its longest serving one. Smith, who learned the police-advocacy work from the senior Warnken, has been the senior MTA attorney for 12 years.
Last year, she handled 92 cases, covering 57 internal discipline matters, six disability retirement matters, 12 wills, three general matters and 14 grievances. At any given time, her team can also have 300 workers’ compensation cases, including those brought by troopers.
“I’m on call 24/7,” said Smith, one of only a few attorneys statewide specializing in representing police officers. “If something happens, they (troopers) call me in the middle of the night. I’m there for them.”
For Smith, it’s an honor not a burden.
“How I look at representing them is they go out every day and potentially risk their lives for the people in the state,” Smith said. “And it’s the least I can do to be there for them when they need me because not every complaint, they receive is a valid complaint. Sometimes, citizens just get angry. They got a ticket, for example. But I’m there regardless of whether it’s complete nonsense or something serious happened. You know, it’s the least I can do to support them when they’re supporting everyone else. “
The firm eventually stopped representing police officers who are not troopers. “I think that’s the value that we have to the troopers because we only represent the Maryland state police,” Smith said. “Our focus isn’t drawn in 100 different directions.”
COPS AND LAWYERS
Warnken’s son had worked at the firm while attending the University of Baltimore law school. After graduating in 2004, he worked for several years in an online poker venture in Minnesota. In 2010, he returned to Maryland to practice law.
Warnken, LLC began in 1992 as the Law Offices of Bonnie L. Warnken. His mother started the firm a year after she became an attorney. A nurse, she attended law school in her 40s. Nursing, however, remained her true love and she returned to it in the early 2000s.
Warnken’s father pursued his first love – teaching – but handled cases that intrigued him during the law firm’s early years. He eventually played a leading role in the firm that became Warnken LLC in 2001 and continued to champion the rights of cops.
The son, who shared his father’s commitment to the troopers, saw a huge void in the firm’s service to them. It did not provide workers’ compensation representation to a group of employees working in one of the nation’s most dangerous occupations.
As his father was winding down his illustrious legal career, the son steered the firm away from criminal work to workers’ compensation and injury cases.
“I set us out to be the best workers’ comp firm in the state of Maryland,” the younger Warnken said,
Over three years, the firm saw the Professor’s criminal cases to their completion while turning its attention to workers’ compensation, a field that the son was passionate about. Byron B.’s favorite book is “The Jungle,” the 1906 classic novel by muckraking journalist Upton Sinclair that drew attention to the horrendous working conditions in the American meat-packing industry.
When the firm moved from Towson to Pikesville in 2013, it brought along its 30 or so workers’ comp files. It hired more attorneys to grow its workers’ comp practice. In September 2024, it had 663 workers’ comp cases.
“To go from zero to 30 took like three years,” the younger Warnken recalled. “‘And now we add about 30 new cases a month. That’s dramatic when I think about it like that. Thirty cases over three years from 2010-2013. And that’s what we do a month in new cases now which is kind of astounding to me,”
Multiple walls in the Pikesville office are vivid proof that the firm has not lost sight of its commitment to the troopers as it grows its workers’ comp portfolio. Brightly colored placards on large wooden planks bear the citation of the professor’s court victories – many of which were on behalf of the troopers.
“We were exploding as a worker’s comp firm,” the younger Warnken said. “All the while staying true to the thing that got us our start which was the state troopers.”
In some ways, it feels like Warnken is only beginning its fight for the troopers. In 2021, Maryland’s Law Enforcement Officers’ Bill of Rights was repealed. This despite firm attorneys testifying against the repeal. Now, Smith and Warnken must find new ways to protect officers such as through rights already spelled out in the Constitution. As Warnken says, “Everyone has the right to remain silent when accused of a crime or potentially facing criminal punishment.”
“Everything comes full circle because my father spent years and years making case law to further flesh out and refine the Law Enforcement Officers’ Bill of Rights,” said Warnken, who in 2015 bought the law firm he still thinks of as belonging to his parents. “And it’s possible now that we may need to spend years and years doing the exact same thing – fleshing out [the protections as they now exist].”
No matter what the future holds, as long as Warnken, LLC is around, it seems the firm will be representing law enforcement officers and the injured.
READ MORE ABOUT WARNKEN, LLCC
Founder Byron L. Warner explains how his firm came to represent cops (video)
The post Warnken, LLC and the Maryland Troopers Association first appeared on Warnken, LLC – Voted MD’s Best Personal Injury Lawyers.
