Court

Marylanders injured by a state vehicle can recover more than the $50,000 limit the state has set. They can turn to their auto insurance to make up the difference between the state cap and the maximum of their underinsured motorist provision, Maryland's highest court ruled yesterday.In reviewing two cases, the Court of Appeals said the state's $50,000 limit, set by the General Assembly, is meant to constrain the state. It does not limit recovery from an insurance company.The ruling stems from a suit filed by John and Tommie Sue Popa, whose son Jonathan died in July 1991 when a state trooper's vehicle struck his stopped car.A Cecil County Circuit Court jury awarded them $867,000.

WASHINGTON -- The new spotlight on affirmative action flashed briefly on the Supreme Court yesterday, but the justices found it easy to step aside for the time being as they move toward a major ruling in coming weeks.In a brief order, the court chose not to review a promotion plan for black firefighters that ended six years ago. White firefighters who felt they had to wait too long for promotions got the plan overturned in a lower court, an action that probably means they now will get back pay.The case from Birmingham, Ala., was the first of its kind to reach the court since a renewed political controversy began surrounding affirmative action in recent weeks.

WASHINGTON -- Justice Harry A. Blackmun's retirement this summer will leave the Supreme Court with one obvious gap: It will have no judge willing to keep a thumb on the scale of the law to make it weigh in favor of "the little people."That is how Justice Blackmun has seen his job for years, that is what has led most court observers to label him a "liberal," and that is why he sometimes is criticized for appearing to opt for results more than for legal principle.Without a justice inclined that way, the court after Justice Blackmun is likely to be seen as moving even further toward the center of the judicial spectrum -- a center revolving around the idea that the law is not meant to be an engine of social reform.

WIMBLEDON, England -- The match was supposed to be on Court 8, an outside court at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club, but all at once Pam Shriver, with only one good leg to stand on, found herself at Centre Court.It wasn't like the old days. She wasn't in a major singles showdown.After all, she is 30 now.But the thrill was the same, being there with her doubles partner Elizabeth Smylie competing in the first round as the sixth seed.Her parents were in the stands for the first time in 10 years, with four other close friends.

WASHINGTON -- The impending Democratic takeover of the Senate, lawmakers and administration officials agree, will produce a vast change in an area that has produced some of the sharpest partisan battles in recent years: President Bush's effort to shape the federal bench with conservative judicial nominees. There is a strong consensus that the four most conservative of Bush's nominations to the federal appeals courts are now dead. Republicans and Democrats say the four have no chance of confirmation in the next several weeks of the lame-duck congressional session or in the final two years of Bush's term.

Visiting an American courtroom yesterday for the first time, a group of Russian judicial officials sampled views from the lawyers' trial table, the clerk's station and a Baltimore judge's padded chair. They filled the seats in the jury box, and laughed as the translator relayed their question: How do you discourage jurors from snoozing on the job?Judge Edward J. Angeletti retrieved a red tin, smiled and answered, "We give them a piece of candy in the afternoon. You'd be amazed how effective it is to keep people awake."

Colors used in a company's products can qualify for trademark protection. A headline in yesterday's editions incorrectly used the word copyright in describing this protection.+ The Sun regrets the errors.WASHINGTON -- Somewhere over the rainbow, there may be a color that could turn the most homely and ordinary thing in life into a thing of beauty -- making attic insulation pink, for example. Of such artistic sensitivity can a Supreme Court decision be made.Quoting G. K. Chesterton, ordinarily not a legal authority, Justice Stephen G. Breyer wrote a court opinion yesterday giving makers of consumer goods a right to monopolize a color, keeping it forever away from competitors.

WASHINGTON -- One week after a foreign court all but cut off a Virginia father's ties to one daughter in a celebrated family dispute, a court reportedly has taken similar action to distance him from his second daughter.Dr. Eric Foretich, a McLean, Va., oral surgeon and the father in an international child-custody tangle, conceded in an interview yesterday that he had now "lost both children."The two children are a 10-year-old daughter who lives in McLean with her mother, Sharon Sullivan, who was Dr. Foretich's second wife; and Hilary Foretich, 8, who lives in New Zealand with her mother, Dr. Elizabeth Morgan, Dr. Foretich's third wife.

Maryland's highest court has dismissed charges against a man arrested for loitering and drug violations in a "drug-free zone" in Baltimore but delayed a decision on whether the city's zones are constitutional.The Maryland Court of Appeals' decision on Wednesday came two days after the high court upheld a separate state law setting up drug-free zones within 1,000 feet of schools in Maryland.Baltimore's ordinance provides for misdemeanor penalties against anyone loitering to sell narcotics in areas designated as drug-free zones.

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court, in a decision as bold as anything it has done in years, nullified yesterday a 5-year-old federal ban on carrying a gun to school, and seemed to be threatening other national laws, too.The 5-4 ruling reclaimed the court's power to curb Congress' passage of sweeping laws to deal with the nation's social problems, and instructed lawmakers to confine their efforts to "truly national" matters.Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, signaling the importance of what the court was doing, assigned the main opinion to himself.