Compensatory Damages

In an article Saturday, The Sun reported incorrectly that the judge overseeing the nation's largest asbestos personal-injury case had ruled that none of the more than 8,000 plaintiffs could receive punitive damages until all compensatory damages had been paid.In fact, the order may apply only to the 6,000 claims that originated in Baltimore. Lawyers for the plaintiffs and the defendant asbestos companies are to argue the scope of Judge Marshall A. Levin's ruling.The Sun regrets the error.

Lawyers for northern Baltimore County families and businesses whose $1.5 billion damages award against the ExxonMobil Corp. was largely overturned by Maryland's highest court asked for more time to seek reconsideration. In a three-page motion filed Friday, the attorneys representing plaintiffs in an underground gasoline leak at a Jacksonville Exxon station in 2006 said they need more time to respond to the Feb. 26 Court of Appeals ruling because of the complexity and impact of the case.

The state's highest court reversed a $5.4 million judgment yesterday that a jury in Baltimore Circuit Court awarded to the widows of three asbestos victims in 1993.The Court of Appeals ordered a new trial and ruled that the asbestos companies, ACandS Inc. of Lancaster, Pa., and Porter Hayden Co. of Baltimore, that distributed asbestos to the companies where the three men worked cannot be assessed punitive damages when the case is retried.The court said lawyers for Ida Sara Masket Asner, Mary Matilda Wilson and Jean Payne failed to show the asbestos companies demonstrated "a conscious or deliberate disregard of the threat" from asbestos exposure, which is necessary for punitive damages to be awarded.

Baltimore County jurors returned a verdict for punitive damages against ExxonMobil Corp. on Thursday that raises the total award stemming from an underground gasoline leak in 2006 to more than $1.5 billion, a figure that a plaintiffs' lawyer says could make it the largest judgment ever in a case of this type. A review of the final verdict, released in full Friday, shows that it includes more than $1 billion in new awards divided among 160 families and businesses in the small north county community of Jacksonville, plus compensatory damages awarded earlier in the week.

In a decision that could cost plaintiffs in Maryland's asbestos litigation millions of dollars, the state's highest court yesterday virtually eliminated any chance for asbestos victims to recover punitive damages.Reviewing a case heard in Baltimore, the Maryland Court of Appeals reversed punitive damage awards totaling $3.5 million for three asbestos victims -- and barred more than 8,500 plaintiffs awaiting future "minitrials" from such awards.What's more, lawyers in the case said that the ruling means that other asbestos plaintiffs will have almost no chance of winning punitive awards unless they uncover startling new evidence against asbestos companies.

Lawyers for northern Baltimore County families and businesses whose $1.5 billion damages award against the ExxonMobil Corp. was largely overturned by Maryland's highest court asked for more time to seek reconsideration. In a three-page motion filed Friday, the attorneys representing plaintiffs in an underground gasoline leak at a Jacksonville Exxon station in 2006 said they need more time to respond to the Feb. 26 Court of Appeals ruling because of the complexity and impact of the case.

A Baltimore County jury has ordered Exxon Mobil Corp. to pay more than $495 million to compensate a group of Jacksonville families and businesses for claims of lost property value, emotional distress and medical monitoring resulting from a 2006 underground gasoline leak - and damages could continue to grow. The Circuit Court jury was scheduled to continue working Thursday to decide an amount to award the 160 families and businesses in punitive damages, which could be several times higher.

ANNAPOLIS -- Owens-Illinois Inc. has suffered another setback in its ongoing struggle to shake itself free of asbestos lawsuits.The Maryland Court of Appeals yesterday upheld most of the damages against the Toledo manufacturer won by two former Bethlehem Steel Corp. shipyard employees who suffer from asbestosis, an incurable lung disease.The state's highest court ruled that Othello Armstrong, 76, of Baltimore, a former welder, and Forrest Wood, 79, of Kissimmee, Fla., a retired rigger, were entitled to compensatory damages.

In January, a Pasadena man allegedly shot his estranged wife twice in the parking lot of a Pasadena shopping mall.Yesterday, his wife shot back.Mary Maxine Copeland filed suit in county Circuit Court seeking $7 million in damages from her husband, Arthur, for allegedly shooting her on her 59th birthday at the Marley Station mall.Mr. Copeland, of the 1200 block of Rock Hill Road in Pasadena, is being held at the county detention center awaiting trial. He is charged with assault with intent to murder in the Jan. 17 shooting.

BOISE, Idaho -- A state court jury has ordered 12 members of the environmental group Earth First! to pay $1.15 million in damages to a contractor for damaged equipment and work delays as the result of protests in the virgin forests of northern Idaho.The jury of eight women and four men awarded the plaintiff, Highland Enterprises of Grangeville, Idaho, about $150,000 in compensatory damages and $1 million in punitive damages in the civil case.The verdict was reached last week in a district court in Grangeville, about 250 miles north of Boise, in Idaho County.

The oversized windows of Hans Wilhelmsen's house in Jacksonville command a view to the east of hills dotted with baled hay and stands of oak, maple and pine on the 70 acres he owns a mile south of where an Exxon station unleashed an underground flood of unleaded gasoline five years ago. Thirteen bison patrolled the fields then, but they're gone now, and Wilhelmsen is sure he knows why. "We saw six die at one time" about two years ago, Wilhelmsen said....

A Baltimore County jury has ordered Exxon Mobil Corp. to pay more than $495 million to compensate a group of Jacksonville families and businesses for claims of lost property value, emotional distress and medical monitoring resulting from a 2006 underground gasoline leak - and damages could continue to grow. The Circuit Court jury was scheduled to continue working Thursday to decide an amount to award the 160 families and businesses in punitive damages, which could be several times higher.

ExxonMobil Corp. has lost its bid to avoid paying punitive damages in a case stemming from an underground gasoline leak in northern Baltimore County in 2006, but how much the international company will have to pay remains to be seen as the case continues in Circuit Court on Wednesday. A six-member civil jury retired for the day Tuesday after returning a sealed judgment intended to compensate families and businesses for damages - plaintiffs had claimed lost property values, medical monitoring and emotional stress.

Two former city school employees are seeking more than $50,000 apiece in compensatory damages after a city commission ruled that their firings resulted from racial discrimination. James Kidd Jr. and Adrienne Brown were budget analysts in 2004 when they were fired after joining black co-workers in a complaint filed with the school system. The complaint alleged that blacks were being denied promotions. Yesterday, Kidd and Brown appeared before the Baltimore Community Relations Commission and asked for compensatory damages to cover lost pay and suffering.

Billionaire financier Ronald O. Perelman stands to become even richer after a jury verdict yesterday in his fraud case against Morgan Stanley, the nation's second-largest securities firm. A jury in a Florida state court awarded $604.3 million in compensatory damages to Perelman, chairman of Manhattan-based Revlon Inc., whose net worth was estimated at $4.9 billion by Forbes magazine in a recent report on the world's wealthiest people. Perelman accused Morgan Stanley of defrauding him for the sake of earning investment banking fees when it advised him to sell his 82 percent stake in camping-gear maker Coleman Co. Inc. to Sunbeam Corp.

RICHMOND, Va. - Roche Holding AG may lose its license to use Igen International Inc. technology after an appeals court upheld yesterday Igen's right to end the contract even as the judges reduced by more than $486 million the damages Roche was told to pay. Roche, the world's biggest maker of diagnostic tests, will have to renegotiate the contract or lose access to technology used to evaluate body fluids for illnesses such as cancer and thyroid disorders....

The oversized windows of Hans Wilhelmsen's house in Jacksonville command a view to the east of hills dotted with baled hay and stands of oak, maple and pine on the 70 acres he owns a mile south of where an Exxon station unleashed an underground flood of unleaded gasoline five years ago. Thirteen bison patrolled the fields then, but they're gone now, and Wilhelmsen is sure he knows why. "We saw six die at one time" about two years ago, Wilhelmsen said....

RICHMOND, Va. - Roche Holding AG may lose its license to use Igen International Inc. technology after an appeals court upheld yesterday Igen's right to end the contract even as the judges reduced by more than $486 million the damages Roche was told to pay. Roche, the world's biggest maker of diagnostic tests, will have to renegotiate the contract or lose access to technology used to evaluate body fluids for illnesses such as cancer and thyroid disorders....

Allied Irish Banks PLC has fired a well-aimed shot that could result in the recovery of millions of dollars from two of the country's largest banking companies, which allegedly aided a rogue trader in defrauding the Dublin bank of $691.2 million, industry experts said. Allied, the former parent company of Baltimore-based Allfirst Financial Inc., sued Citibank and Bank of America last week, seeking to recover about $500 million in compensatory damages - the share of the losses it attributed to the banks' alleged wrongdoing.

The parents of a Sykesville man, who with his fiancee was killed in a 1996 drunken-driving crash, are seeking $4 million in damages from the jailed driver, court records show.In a suit filed in Carroll Circuit Court, Michael and Kathleen Thompson allege Brian W. Ridings was negligent and reckless as well as drunk when he drove his 1989 Ford Probe into a tree off Bloom Road near Muller Road near Winfield on Oct. 6, 1996.The couple's son, Andrew Michael Thompson, 22, and his girlfriend, Kimberly Ann Reals, 19, passengers in the vehicle, died in the crash.