Court Of Special

Clyde's, which operates restaurants in Chevy Chase and Columbia, should not be required to pay Maryland's admissions and amusement tax on gross receipts, the Court of Special Appeals said yesterday. Music played there is mostly for ambience, and the restaurant does not rely on a cover charge or additional food and beverage sales to pay for the entertainment, the court held in a 2-1 decision. The ruling came in a failed appeal by the state comptroller's office, which also lost bids in Tax Court and Baltimore City Circuit Court to collect the taxes from the Washington-area restaurant chain.

An Ellicott City lawyer said yesterday that he will ask the Maryland Court of Special Appeals to consider the state's revised open-meetings law in determining whether he can sue the Howard County Board of Education for allegedly meeting in secret. The latest development in Allen Dyer's four-year legal challenge comes after the General Assembly overrode Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.'s veto of an open-meetings bill on Tuesday - effective immediately. The Maryland Open Meetings Act now allows anyone to sue a public body for alleged violations of the law. Dyer's suit prompted state lawmakers to seek clarification last spring of the open-meetings law after a Howard Circuit Court ruling in 2003 stated that only a person "adversely affected" by an alleged violation could take a public body to court - as called for in the law's previous language.

ANNAPOLIS -- Reversing a lower court's ruling, the Maryland Court of Special Appeals has upheld the right of the state attorney general's Consumer Protection Division to obtain reimbursement of travel expenses for thousands of consumers lured by deceptive ads to visit campgrounds where they were given a sales pitch.Millions of advertising notices were mailed to Marylanders by Outdoor World from 1984 to at least 1989, saying they had won or were eligible for prizes such as a Chevy Blazer or $10,000 in cash, and could claim them at one of the company's campgrounds in Pennsylvania or Virginia.

The Maryland Court of Special Appeals yesterday upheld a $2 million civil judgment against a Baltimore police officer accused of beating a man, leaving him paralyzed and then filing false charges against him in a 1997 incident. The city is obligated to pay the judgment because Officer Joseph Tracy, a seven-year veteran of the force, was working in a law-enforcement capacity at the time. Tracy was found liable in December 2000 in Baltimore Circuit Court for malicious prosecution and for violating the rights of Horace Muhammad.

Buddy's Crabs and Ribs owner Harvey Blonder has lost his latest court battle to secure a 2 a.m. liquor license for his downtown Annapolis restaurant.The Court of Special Appeals upheld Friday a Circuit Court judge's decision to bar the restaurant from selling alcohol after midnight.A lawyer for Mr. Blonder had argued that city officials never fully explained why they gave Buddy's a 2 a.m. liquor license two years ago, thus preventing Judge Eugene M. Lerner from conducting a full review of the case.

The Court of Special Appeals yesterday dismissed an appeal by a Columbia health care firm that had been ordered to pay $26,500 to a woman who claimed the firm discriminated against her because of her pregnancy.The court ruled that it did not have jurisdiction to decide the matter because the issue did not originate in a lower court, but rather in a county administrative agency, the Human Rights Commission.In June 1995, the commission ordered HealthCare Strategies Inc., a managed-care provider, to pay $26,500 in back pay to medical transcriptionist Judith Carter of Randallstown.

Joyce Danna rose to her feet, her ankles shackled by leg irons, and cried tears of joy yesterday when Baltimore County Circuit Judge Thomas J. Bollinger ordered her release from prison on $25,000 bond.After 14 years in the Maryland prison system, freedom -- at least temporary freedom -- was just over the horizon for Mrs. Danna, 42, whose 1978 conviction in her husband's murder was overturned Friday. The Maryland Court of Special Appeals granted her a new trial. She had been serving a life sentence.

Marijuana-rights activist Pamela Snowhite Davis' attorney filed a motion in Anne Arundel County Circuit Court yesterday requesting her freedom pending the appeal of her conviction and prison sentence.Davis, 48, of Silver Run, is serving a two-year sentence at the Maryland Correctional Institution for Women in Jessup for a felony conviction on a charge of maintaining a common nuisance, in addition to misdemeanor convictions on marijuana and drug paraphernalia possession counts.She was convicted in March after a Carroll County Narcotics Task Force raid on her farm in which officers seized less than an ounce of marijuana.

Baltimore Circuit Judge Ellen Lipton Hollander begins a new job today as the only woman on the state Court of Special Appeals.Judge Hollander, 45, was named to a city seat on Maryland's second-highest court Friday by Gov. William Donald Schaefer.She replaces another woman, Judge Diana Gribbon Motz, who was appointed to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in July.Formerly a lawyer in the now-defunct Baltimore firm of Frank, Bernstein, Conaway & Goldman, she left the practice in 1979 to become an assistant Maryland attorney general and, a few months later, an assistant U.S. attorney.

The state's highest court has affirmed the dismissal of a $10.5 million suit filed against the Carroll County Narcotics Task Force by a Westminster defense attorney.Without comment, the Maryland Court of Appeals last week declined to hear Stephen P. Bourexis' appeal of a Carroll Circuit judge's dismissal of his 1992 suit.Mr. Bourexis' suit contended that the task force blackballed his clients from becoming informants or entering plea negotiations. He had sought damages against the task force, state police Tfc. Richard Heuisler and Westminster police Sgt. Andrew McKendrick.