Filing

The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts reports that business and personal bankruptcies have fallen in the past year by 8 percent over the year before. Maybe the drop off occurred because the most desperate businesses and consumers have already filed. For the past 12 months ending Sept. 30, a total of 1,467,221 individual and companies filed for relief from creditors. Most of those - 1,417,326 - are personal bankruptcies. In comparison, 1,596,355 bankruptcies were filed for the 12-month period last year.

Howard County school board member Allen Dyer had four of his fellow board members served with a legal complaint moments before the panel recessed during Tuesday night's meeting. Dyer, who is currently battling the school board's request that the state board of education oust him from the panel, filed the lawsuit May 4 in Howard County Circuit Court against fellow members Janet Siddiqui, Ellen Flynn Giles, Sandra French and Frank Aquino. The four voted in favor of a June 9 resolution requesting his ouster.

Baltimore's Millennial Media Inc., one of the dominant companies in the rapidly growing field of mobile advertising, plans to raise $75 million in a public stock offering — money it will use to expand its operations overseas and go head-to-head against Google and Apple, according to a securities filing Thursday. Founded five years ago, Millennial Media's revenues have grown steadily, and it has attracted $65 million in venture capital to fuel its early expansion. Millennial's revenues grew from $1.5 million in 2007 to $69 million in the first nine months of 2011, according to its filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The owner of an Anne Arundel County trucking company put out of business late last year by federal safety officials has filed for bankruptcy protection again, listing more than $3.3 million in debt. Mark David Gunther Sr., owner of Harmans-based Gunthers Transport LLC, filed under Chapter 11 in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Baltimore on May 15. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration called Gunthers Transport an "imminent hazard" to the public when it ordered the company's trucks off the road on Nov. 16. When the company tried to reconstitute itself weeks later as Clock Transport LLC, it, too, was ordered closed.

The publisher of the Baltimore Jewish Times, a weekly newspaper in the city since 1919, filed for bankruptcy protection Wednesday and blamed its financial woes on losing a legal fight over breaking a contract with its printer. Alter Communications, which also publishes Style and Chesapeake Life magazines, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in U.S. District Court in Baltimore. The filing will not affect the company's day-to-day operations for employees, readers and advertisers, the company said, and the Jewish Times and the magazines will continue to be published.

The agent for Orioles minor-leaguer Dontrelle Willis is in the process of filing a grievance against the club, alleging the Orioles told Willis his was given his release but then placed him on the restricted list, preventing him from pursuing other baseball opportunities. Willis' agent, Matt Sosnick, said Willis was told he would be given his release by Orioles baseball administration director Tripp Norton on Wednesday. But on Sunday, Willis was placed on the minor-league restricted list.

Medifast Inc., an Owings Mills company that sells weight-loss control programs, said Friday that it delayed filing its fourth-quarter financial results with the Securities and Exchange Commission – a disclosure that caused its share price to plummet 24 percent. Medifast said in a statement that it expects to release its financial results for the fourth quarter and full year of 2010 by the end of this month, after needing additional time "to review the recognition of certain expenses in prior periods.

Just a few years ago, SafeNet Inc., a Harford County technology firm, was wracked by a stock options scandal that sent its former chief financial officer to prison, tanked its stock price and eventually led to investors' taking the company private. But on Monday, Belcamp-based SafeNet announced that it is ready to hit Wall Street again. The company disclosed in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission its plans to go public in a $300 million stock offering — one of the biggest IPOs by a Maryland company in years.

Baltimore County Council members said Tuesday that county development chief Arnold Jablon should not have acted as the attorney for a local environmental engineer who has worked for builders on projects in Baltimore County. Jablon, who worked for the Venable law firm before becoming head of the county's department of permits, approvals and inspections this year, is the lawyer of record in a small-claims case brought in Baltimore County District Court this summer by George Perdikakis.

Linda Lynn of Baltimore Inc., a family-owned chain of women's clothing stores that served the Baltimore area for 51 years, has filed for Chapter 7 liquidation in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Baltimore.The filing Wednesday came almost three weeks after Linda Lynn abruptly closed four suburban stores and consolidated its wares for a closeout sale at its remaining location in Lexington Mall. The downtown store closed Saturday.Marc Diamand, vice president of Linda Lynn, said that "the economy played a major role" in the demise of the company and "a couple of locations were bleeding us."

Here's another reason to file your tax returns as early as possible: an identity thief might beat you to the money. Identity thieves are filing fake federal returns using taxpayers' Social Security numbers and claiming tax refunds worth billions of dollars. The taxpayers only find out about it when their returns are rejected by the IRS because someone already received a refund using their identity. It's a big problem — and one that's rapidly growing, according to a report this month from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration.

When it was announced that yet another group would be taking on management of the Baltimore Grand Prix, one of the company's funders stepped into the spotlight. Columbia-based financier J.P. Grant III has stayed out of the public eye since the storm of a no-bid city schools contract blew over in 2000. But all the while, his company Grant Capital Management was accumulating city contracts. In 2003, the city granted his company a "master lease," an agreement that speeds up the contracting process, but also made it more difficult for The Sun to track.

A 61-year-old white woman, who says she was wrongfully fired from the Baltimore prosecutors' office after 25 years on the job, has filed an employment discrimination lawsuit alleging age, race and gender discrimination in the 2010 termination. Antoinette E. Swiec, of Baltimore, is seeking $400,000 in compensation from the Baltimore state's attorney's office on each of two counts, claiming she was fired because the predominantly young, African American division she worked for wanted her out. The lawsuit was filed in  U.S. District Court Monday, and was to be served on Baltimore State's Attorney Gregg Bernstein, though the firing occurred under his predecessor, Patricia C. Jessamy.

The Seacrets branding crusade continues. After winning a similar case last November, Ocean City's Seacrets has filed another trademark infringement lawsuit, this time against Baltimore restaurant Caribbean Secrets. Seacrets - which this Baltimore Sun story describes as "more of a theme park" than a bar because of its multiple entities - has asked the restaurant to change its name several times, but the request has been "adamantly" denied, according to Sam Littlepage, lead counsel for Seacrets.

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.

Howard County's 19th-century courthouse has seen a 40 percent increase in jury trials in the past year, causing court officials to clamor for a new facility. "Our county is growing, our population is growing, and that means more case filing," said Administrative Judge Lenore R. Gelfman. "The demands have been significant for a while. " Gelfman, County State's Attorney Dario J. Broccolino and Sheriff James F. Fitzgerald told the County Council last week that the increase is too much for the 170-year-old Ellicott City courthouse, which is cramped and outdated.

State Sen. Rob Garagiola, a Democrat from Germantown, has been sent a letter of reprimand from a state ethics committee for failing to disclose income he received as a lobbyist on state disclosure forms. The committee said in a letter it will take no further action on the issue. Questions about the 2001-2003 disclosure forms surfaced as Garagiola ran for the Democratic nomination in Maryland's 6th Congressional District this year. The issue became a frequent point of attack for his leading opponent, John Delaney, who raised the issue in campaign advertisements.

A developer has filed for a permit to demolish theMorris A. Mechanic Theatre, a decades-old venue that has sat unused for eight years in the heart of downtown Baltimore, and replace it with a $150 million-to-$200 million mixed-use development. OneWest LLC plans to build two 30-story towers containing 600 market-rate apartments, 150,000 square feet of retail space and an underground parking garage on the site at 1 NorthCharles St., the partnership said. "The market is ripe and the financing is available for apartments," said Howard S. Brown, a partner in OneWest and chairman and president of Owings Mills-based David S. Brown Enterprises Ltd., which is managing the development.