General Counsel

The Maryland insurance commissioner has asked a Circuit Court judge for permission to fire four top executives of PrimeHealth Corp., the Lanham health care company at the center of the scandal surrounding former state Sen. Larry Young.In a petition filed in Baltimore Circuit Court, Commissioner Steven B. Larsen contends the services of the executives, three vice presidents and a general counsel are no longer needed and their salaries -- each makes about $100,000 per year -- are depleting the assets of the health maintenance organization.

CellPro Inc. will file motions seeking reconsideration of key issues in a patent-infringement case brought against the company by the Johns Hopkins University, Mark J. Handfelt, vice president and general counsel of CellPro, said yesterday.Hopkins and two companies to which it granted licenses sued CellPro in 1994. They charged that CellPro had, in effect, stolen patented Hopkins research leading to a device used in cancer treatment. A federal court in Delaware ruled for the Hopkins side and ordered CellPro last year to pay about $7 million in penalties and damages.

Bruce I. Rothschild of Columbia has been elected vice president, general counsel and secretary, by the Rouse Co.'s board of directors.Mr. Rothschild was associate general counsel and handled legal issues for the office of community development division. Robert G. Stone of Columbia was awarded the NASA Exceptional Service Medal for dedicated scientific research work in the area of radio physics and astronomy, acoustics, wave propagation, radar and instrumentation.Dr. Stone is acting associate chief of the laboratory for extraterrestrial physics at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt.

Baseball Orioles -- Agreed to terms with P Todd Frohwirth on a minor-league contract and invited him to spring training.Boston Red Sox -- Agreed to terms with P Tony Fossas and P Chris Howard on minor-league contracts and invited both players to spring training.Cleveland Indians -- Agreed to terms with SS Omar Vizquel on a one-year contract.Colorado Rockies -- Agreed to terms with P Lance Painter on a one-year contract.Montreal Expos -- Extended the contract of manager Felipe Alou through the 1995 season.

Leonard Lesser, a lawyer, advocate for the poor and union official who had been AFL-CIO general counsel, died Wednesday at the Washington home of his daughter. He was 79.The cause was cancer, said his daughter, Susan Leighton.Mr. Lesser began a nearly 50-year career in Washington in 1939 as a lawyer with the federal Security Agency, a forerunner of what is now the Department of Health and Human Services.He transferred to the Department of Labor during World War II.In 1949, he moved to Detroit to serve as a lawyer with the United Auto Workers union.

The Department of Energy has spent nearly $50 million over the last three years paying private law firms to defend its contractors against eight lawsuits brought by workers and civilians who asserted they were harmed by radiation from the nuclear weapons industry, according to an internal memorandum.Payments to private lawyers in the eight cases accounted for more than half of what the department spent in that time on contractors' legal fees, records show.The memorandum, prepared by a team of lawyers in the Energy Department's Office of General Counsel, was obtained by the Military Production Network, an alliance of small environmental groups from 12 states where nuclear weapons plants are situated.

Otis M. SmithMichigan justiceOtis M. Smith, 72, the first black to serve on the Michigan Supreme Court and the first to be named a corporate officer of General Motors Corp., died in his sleep at his home in Detroit on Wednesday of prostate cancer. He retired from GM in 1984 as vice president and general counsel. He became one of the highest-ranking blacks in corporate America when Thomas Murphy, GM's chairman, appointed him as the automaker's top lawyer in 1977.At the time the corporation was under attack on several legal and regulatory fronts.

President Clinton did the right thing in asking Attorney General Janet Reno to appoint a special, independent counsel to look into allegations of impropriety and worse involving his and Hillary Clinton's involvement with a failed savings and loan in Arkansas while he was governor.He should have done it last week. It's unfortunate that he had to deal with this story while on his important European trip, but that's politics. His adversaries, such as Senate Minority Leader Robert Dole, believe this apparent scandal may be political pay dirt for the Republican Party, and are behaving accordingly.

In a surprise move, lawyers for ousted NAACP Executive Director Benjamin F. Chavis Jr. asked a Washington judge last night to block the civil rights group from firing him and naming an interim replacement.Willie Abrams, an NAACP assistant general counsel, said Judge Luke C. Moore of District of Columbia Superior Court called NAACP lawyers about 6:40 p.m. to say that attorneys for Dr. Chavis were in his chambers seeking a temporary restraining order.Judge Moore declined to issue the order on the spot, but scheduled a hearing for this morning, Mr. Abrams said.

Otis M. Smith, 72, the first black to serve on the Michigan Supreme Court and the first to be named a corporate officer of General Motors Corp., died in his sleep at his home in Detroit Wednesday after a four-year bout with prostate cancer. He retired from GM in 1984 as vice president and general counsel. He became one of the highest-ranking blacks in corporate America when Thomas Murphy, GM's chairman, appointed him the automaker's top lawyer in 1977. At the time, the corporation was under attack on several legal and regulatory fronts, including accusations of tax fraud and lawsuits by consumers angry about the substitution of engines from one car division in models from another GM division.

Douglas W. Thiessen, a Justice Department attorney who was the Maryland Republican Party's general counsel, died Friday while on a ski outing in Mercersburg, Pa. The West River resident was 35. He and members of his family were skiing at Whitetail resort when he was found "unresponsive on the side of a ski trail," according to a spokesman for the resort. Mr. Thiessen did not respond to cardiopulmonary resuscitation and was taken to a hospital in Hagerstown, where he was pronounced dead.

Patricia A. Roberts, a retired Environmental Protection Agency lawyer and an acknowledged expert on Maryland silver who volunteered at the Maryland Historical Society, died of multiple myeloma Dec. 10 at George Washington University Hospital in Washington. She was 66. Ms. Roberts was born in Baltimore and raised on Baker Street. She was a 1960 graduate of Western High School. She earned a bachelor's degree in chemistry from Morgan State University in 1964. After college, Ms. Roberts began working at the National Institutes of Health's laboratory on cerebral metabolism in Bethesda.

Skelton steps down as McCormick VP Robert W. Skelton will retire as senior vice president, general counsel and secretary from McCormick and Co. Inc. after a 32-year career, the Sparks-based spice company announced yesterday. The retirement is effective Jan. 1. Skelton will be succeeded by W. Geoffrey Carpenter, the company's associate general counsel and assistant secretary. Skelton joined McCormick in 1976 and was promoted to vice president, general counsel and secretary in 1996. He was promoted to his current position in 2002.

The Maryland Stadium Authority is expected to discuss the possible removal of Alison Asti as executive director tomorrow afternoon in a closed session. Asti's removal has been anticipated since July, when Frederick W. Puddester, an appointee of Gov. Martin O'Malley, took over as chairman of the authority. Asti has said conversations with the then-incoming chairman left her believing that O'Malley did not want her to continue in the job. But tomorrow will mark the first time the board has gathered to discuss Asti's status, sources with knowledge of the meeting said.

In anticipation of a possible vote to remove Alison Asti as executive director of the Maryland Stadium Authority, Asti's attorney released a letter yesterday defending a clause in her contract that would allow her to remain the agency's top attorney. The letter is a response to various potential arguments Asti has heard against the validity of her contract, said Andrew D. Levy of Baltimore's Brown, Goldstein & Levy, LLP. "Because Ms. Asti has not committed any act that provides the board with contractual right to terminate her employment as general counsel and director of development, Ms. Asti expects that the terms of her employment agreement will be honored by the board without the further involvement of legal counsel," Levy wrote in the letter to authority chairman Frederick W. Puddester.

WASHINGTON -- Top officials at the Federal Emergency Management Agency knew about - but suppressed - reports of possible health problems from formaldehyde in trailers provided to Hurricane Katrina victims, according to documents released yesterday by a House committee. The warnings from Gulf Coast field workers were kept quiet because "senior FEMA officials in Washington ... didn't want the moral and legal responsibility to do what they knew had to be done," said Rep. Henry A. Waxman, a California Democrat and chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, as he opened a hearing into the agency's response.

The "family jewels" documents contain echoes of the present-day debate over domestic surveillance. A memo for the CIA's chief of operations describes a National Security Agency program that monitored "international commercial radio telephone conversations between several Latin American cities and New York." The goal was to track "drug related communications," the document says. In September 1972, the NSA asked the CIA to take over the program, according to the memo, but the reason appears to be redacted.

Ferris Baker Watts, the century-old investment brokerage with deep Baltimore roots, said yesterday that six executives and traders have resigned or taken temporary leave since federal officials and outside counsel began investigating the firm's trades for a former client accused of stealing millions of dollars. The list of temporary and permanent departures includes several top executives in Baltimore and Hunt Valley, indicating the investigations have disrupted management at the firm more broadly than company officials disclosed two weeks ago. The changes are fallout from a federal probe of an investment fund set up by a Cleveland man who, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission lawsuit, took in $50 million from investors and spent much of the money on stock trades placed through Ferris and other firms.

WASHINGTON -- Allowing Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the Home Depot Inc. and other retailers to own banks could threaten the soundness of the nation's banking system, the Federal Reserve's general counsel told a congressional panel yesterday. Since the 1930s when many banks failed, Congress generally has prohibited commercial companies from owning banks. But retailers' growing use of a banking loophole "undermines the supervisory framework that Congress has established" to regulate federally insured financial institutions, said Scott G. Alvarez, general counsel for the Federal Reserve board.

The NFL Players Association and Steve McNair won their grievance against the Tennessee Titans yesterday, a victory that could speed up the quarterback's move to the Ravens. Arbitrator John Feerick, who presided over the seven-hour hearing May 16, ruled that the Titans violated their contract with McNair by barring him from their facility. He said Tennessee must let McNair back into its training complex or allow him to go to another team. No time frame was given for the Titans to adhere to the ruling, but NFLPA general counsel Richard Berthelsen said the club should "move quickly."