Michele McDaniel Rosenfeld

Michele helped our grass roots group wisely navigate the extremely challenging path to fight overdevelopment. With her accrued knowledge from other similar situations, we avoided pursuing expensive rabbit trails. She knew when to move forward and when to stay the course. Her accessibility was unrival...led. Her care and concern was evident in each phone call. I would even venture to say she was a 'friend' to us and our efforts. I could not think more highly of her than I do.

For many months, Michele Rosenfeld provided us with expert legal advice related to a subdivision application and entirely deficient storm water mitigation plan for a large property adjacent to ours in Bethesda. Michele had an amazing facility with and detailed knowledge of all Montgomery County zoni...ng and construction regulations as well as the related case law. Michele was thorough, methodical, wise, and creative in her analysis. She was prompt with her responses to us, clear with her advice, always made herself available for phone consultations, and she was very patient with us and our many questions. We felt extremely well-represented and could not have been more satisfied with her assistance. Michele and the expert engineer she recommended to us were able to obtain, develop and advocate for an excellent outcome on our behalf. We are confident that the storm water mitigation redesign that Michele recommended, and for which she advocated before the Montgomery County Planning Board, will serve to protect our property from storm water damage in the future. Without her redesign, we know the new construction next door and original storm water mitigation plan would have affected us extremely negatively. We enthusiastically and wholeheartedly recommend Michele Rosenfeld to any County resident who may need legal advice on Montgomery County land use issues in general and storm water mitigation, in particular.

I’m the second president of a community advocacy group in Frederick County known as RALE. Michele was our only legal representation in our successful effort to stop a major residential development from happening in a rural part of Southeast Frederick County. Her representation was absolutely brilli...ant, and wound up establishing a precedent in Maryland case law: our case was the first in Maryland where a zoning approval was vacated based upon the judicial finding of an ethics violation by a sitting County Commissioner who voted to approve the development. Our case (75 - 80 Properties, L.L.C. v. RALE, Inc.) began in 2012 when the developer applied for PUD zoning and culminated in August 2020 with our ultimate victory in Maryland’s highest court, The Court of Appeals. Michele was always thoroughly prepared and professional throughout this arduous battle, which encompassed 13 public hearings before the last Frederick County Board of Commissioners and the Frederick County Planning Commission, 2 remand hearings with the new Frederick County Council, and our successful litigations at the Circuit Court, the Court of Special Appeals, and the Court of Appeals. Our case was complex, drawn out and full of intrigue. But it’s what Michele did at the very end of the final public hearing that ultimately led to our improbable and unprecedented reversal of this development. After the BOC president formerly closed the administrative record to any further public comment or cross examination of witnesses, he suddenly read into the record a letter from the Frederick Area Committee for Transportation (FACT) that purported to lend their approval of the development with respect to the enhanced benefits it would bring to the regional transportation network. There was concern among the BOC that the crucial finding of transportation adequacy in the administrative record was deficient and wouldn’t stand up to a subsequent judicial review. While the president was reading the FACT letter Michele got up and walked to the lectern and immediately objected to this last minute introduction of evidence into the record that had just been closed. She also requested the president to make available FACT board members for cross examination, which he denied. To make a long story short, the FACT letter wound up being a fraud. It arose from a prior ex parte conversation that one County Commissioner (who is an attorney himself and was an ex officio board member of FACT at the time) had with 2 of FACT’s board members (one of whom was the father of a person on the developer’s design team) to manufacture evidence of traffic adequacy to bolster the administrative record. As it turned out, the letter was produced without the knowledge of the full FACT board, nor did they support it. Michele instinctively suspected the FACT letter and the timing of its introduction was improper - and she was 100% right! She successfully leveraged it at the Circuit Court to demonstrate an ethics violation by the commissioner. This persuaded the judge that it tainted the administrative record and the proper remedy was to remand the development approval back to the new Frederick County Council for more hearings and fact finding. The new Council failed to resolve the tainted record to the judge’s satisfaction so he vacated the zoning approval. The developer appealed the Circuit Court ruling to COSA and the Court of Appeals, but Michele argued successfully against their appeals and the rest is history! I don’t know how many other attorneys might possess the instincts that Michele had to challenge the FACT letter so tenaciously, but I can’t imagine any other attorney doing a better job than she did. There’s no one I would’ve rather had representing RALE, and I recommend Michele to anyone in need of a land use attorney. And not only is she a very talented attorney, she is a great person and a pleasure to work with.

Michele has represented my organization for the last four years. In that time, I have found that her legal advice is second to none and I rely upon her guidance without question. Whether during public hearings - and we've had many - or in the courtroom, she has displayed a tenacity and outstanding ...legal acumen, that has served our organization far beyond our expectations. We are a small community group, that has been fighting wealthy development interests backed by our County government. With Michele's help and outstanding legal skills, we not only took on this fight - but we won! We stopped the development in it's tracks through an unprecedented (at least for Frederick County) remand by the Circuit Court. Through her additional efforts with the County Council, we ultimately helped persuade the Council to send the developer back to the beginning of the review process and, ultimately, back to court. I say these things because I didn't just want to say nice things about Michele - I want to talk about results and, specifically, the outstanding results that Michele has achieved. These development fights are hard. The deck is stacked against us throughout the legislative and appellate processes. With Michele's able guidance and legal expertise, we've won at both the County and the State level. In addition to stopping one development, through the Circuit Court and County Council, Michele also succeeded at the Court of Special Appeals. In what may be the first of its kind in the State of Maryland, Michele succeeded in having a Development Rights & Responsibilities Agreement (DRRA) vacated. Between stopping the one development and successfully vacating the DRRA of another, Michele has single-handedly set an amazing precedent in our fight for responsible development. She's smart, tenacious, and effective. Bottom line - she gets the job done and I would recommend her without reservation.