District Court

Longtime U.S. Magistrate Judge Paul W. Grimm was promoted to a U.S. District Court judgeship in Maryland by a nearly unanimous confirmation vote in the Senate on Monday despite a backlog of nominations that has left dozens of vacancies on the federal bench. Grimm, a Towson resident who has served as a magistrate judge for the District of Maryland since 1997, fills the opening left by Judge Benson E. Legg, who assumed senior status this year. Grimm's nomination by President Barack Obama in February was uncontroversial — members of both parties supported him — but the gridlocked Senate has been slow to confirm judges.

The Annapolis District Court building closed at noon Thursday due to a lack of heat, and the building is expected to reopen Friday morning. Officials said the courthouse, on Rowe Boulevard at Taylor Avenue, was having mechanical problems. Repairs were expected to be completed Thursday, said judiciary spokeswoman Angelita Plemmer. The problem affected only the District Court building in Annapolis. The other District Court in Anne Arundel County, located in Glen Burnie, remained open, officials said.

Marquis Jones remembers Peter Holland clearly. He's the lawyer whose work, with his law clinic students, led to the dismissal of a claim against her - a credit card debt she said she knew nothing about. "If it hadn't been for Peter and his team, I have no idea what would have happened," the Severn woman recalled, saying a debt-buying company had the wrong person and claimed it served the legal papers on her spouse. She's not married. But unlike Jones, most of those who've benefited from Holland's consumer advocacy never met him. Few of them know that in December he will receive an award for his legal work from the Maryland Legal Services Corp.

Behind the scenes - and several forests' worth of pulp - work is underway to transform Maryland's courts into a system that is nearly paperless. Plans call for the first courts in the state to go electronic in fall of 2013. The guinea pigs are the circuit and district courts in Anne Arundel County. Statewide appeals courts will follow. By the end of 2016, all Maryland courts are to be e-courts. The cost: $45 million, said Ben C. Clyburn, chief judge of the District Court and who heads the project.

Maryland's District Court has tossed out nearly 3,600 debt-collection cases against state residents — with about $7.8 million in claims — as a result of a settlement with regulators over alleged violations. District Court Chief Judge Ben C. Clyburn said in a statement Wednesday that the cases, brought by sister companies LVNV and Resurgent Capital Services, are eligible to be filed again later because they were dismissed without prejudice. LVNV buys consumer debts while Resurgent tries to collect.

A lawyer for John Merzbacher, the former Baltimore Catholic school teacher serving four life terms for child rape and sexual abuse, argued in a federal appeals court filing Thursday that his imprisoned client must be offered a plea deal, despite his convictions, or be released immediately. The claims refer to a U.S. District Court opinion handed down in 2010, saying that Merzbacher's constitutional rights were violated when his defense attorneys neglected to tell him about a 10-year plea offer before his 1995 trial on charges he attacked a Catholic Community middle school girl nearly two decades earlier.

The John R. Hargrove Sr. building of Baltimore's district court closed shortly after 9 a.m. Tuesday because of a nearby water main break that left the facility without water. It's unclear when the building,  on the 700 block of E. Patapsco Ave.,  will reopen and resume hearing cases. Bail reviews were transferred to the Borgerding district court location at 5800 Wabash Ave, and other cases were postponed, said judiciary spokeswoman Terri Bolling. The water main break occurred on the 3600 block of Brooklyn Ave., Bolling said.

UPDATED WITH DETAILS OF CHAN'S ARREST Two men were sentenced last week for jumping onto the field in Oriole Park in separate incidents, though only one is likely to have a conviction on his record a year from now. Peter Chan, identified in court records as a 23-year-old from Towson, was found guilty of trespassing Friday in Baltimore's district court.  He was given a 90-day suspended jail sentenced and ordered to pay a $500 fine and...

A 32-year-old Germantown woman pleaded guilty Friday to using a government credit card for personal use, buying 119 iPads, a mattress set and house cleaning services, according to the Maryland U.S. attorney's office. Tamia M. McCoy, a former employee for the National Institutes of Health, faces up to 10 years in prison at her sentencing in Baltimore's U.S. district court, set for July 26. In all, she stole between $70,000 and $120,000 prosecutors said. “McCoy brazenly sought to profit at the behest of tax payer dollars.

The Maryland attorney general's office argued in a lengthy legal brief, filed in the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, that a convicted child rapist serving four life terms should not be offered a second chance to take a plea deal years after the fact, despite a U.S. district court ruling demanding just that. "The district court erred," Assistant Attorney General Edward Kelley wrote in the 56-page document. He was referring to a finding that the constitutional rights of John Joseph Merzbacher, an English teacher at the South Baltimore Catholic Community middle school in the 1970s, were violated because his attorneys failed to inform him of a plea deal before his 1995 trial on child rape and sexual abuse charges.