The courtroom, one of the largest in the Circuit Court building in Towson, was packed well ahead of the 9 a.m. opening yesterday. Deputies set up extra seats in the aisles to accommodate the crowd, which spilled out into the hall. When Snyder arrived shortly before 9 a.m., several plaintiffs applauded and cheered. Attorneys said they spotted all six alternate jurors in the crowd. The courtroom remained lively and filled with conversation, until a hush fell about 10 a.m. as the jury entered. The jury foreman took more than two hours to read the verdict.
Tizard said he and other residents interviewed various attorneys before settling on Snyder's firm. Snyder declined to say yesterday how much of the settlement will go to legal fees.
"We took on the biggest corporation - and for all intents and purposes, we won," said Jodi Howe, a Robcaste Road resident. "That was no easy task." Howe's family was awarded $700,000 for their house, nearly $150,000 for medical monitoring and $1 million in emotional damages.
Yet Howe said she would have liked to see punitive damages as well - not just for her family's sake, but to send Exxon a message and avoid future such incidents.
Howe said she is torn about leaving her beloved neighborhood, where she has "a home that we love" and her parents living on the same street. "I don't want to go," she said. But "we've got to go."
At Jacksonville's main intersection, a 10-foot wood slat fence encircles what used to be the Exxon station. Yesterday, a worker in a hard hat tended monitoring wells. "Danger! No open flames," read one of many warning signs.
Half a mile north, plaintiff Kathy Fulco, a housewife and artist, stood in the front yard of her sprawling brick home and gestured toward the site that had contaminated the groundwater in the Meredith Ridge development.
"Our little town had such ambience," she said. "Now that place just screams, 'what went wrong here?' "
Baltimore Sun reporters Arin Gencer, Jonathan Pitts and Timothy B. Wheeler contributed to this article.
JACKSONVILLE SPILL TIMELINE
* January 2006: A pipe is accidentally punctured at an Exxon station in the northern Baltimore County community of Jacksonville, causing about 26,000 gallons of gasoline to leak over more than a month.
* February 2006: Exxon Mobil Corp. informs the Maryland Department of the Environment of spill, closes station, begins cleanup.
* April 2006: State says six wells contaminated; 62 residential wells show traces of MTBE; state files $12 million suit against company.
* September 2007: Exxon asks permission to pump up to 68,000 gallons of groundwater a day to contain plume of dissolved gasoline.
* September 2008: State settles case against company, imposes $4 million civil penalty.
* October 2008: Trial begins in Baltimore County Circuit Court negligence suit brought by about 300 Jacksonville residents against the company. Residents seek compensatory and punitive damages of several billion dollars.
* March 2009: Baltimore County jury awards residents more than $150 million in damages.
Source: Baltimore Sun; Maryland Department of the Environment
