Jury

A Harford County jury has determined the State of Maryland and several of its principal transportation agencies were not negligent in connection with a 2001 accident on the Thomas J. Hatem Memorial Bridge that killed two Harford County residents. The jury of six women, who heard a lawsuit brought by the father of one of the victims, 12-year-old Ashley Tollenger, of Churchville, reached its verdict late Friday afternoon, following a trial in Bel Air before Circuit Court Judge M. Elizabeth Bowen that began Nov. 7. Garrett Tollenger, Ashley's father, sued the state, the Maryland Department of Transportation and the Maryland Transportation Authority, claiming their failure to repair defects in the bridge's roadway and to construct a crash barrier separating the oncoming lanes of the four-lane bridge contributed to the death of his daughter and her stepfather, Kenneth Connor, 52, of Havre de Grace.

A jury on Monday evening said that a national homebuilder owes $5.6 million to an Anne Arundel County condo association because their condominium complex was poorly constructed, according to the association's attorney. Following a five week trial and testimony from more than two dozen residents of the Eden Brook Condominiums in Odenton, a jury determined that Virginia-based NVR Inc., which does business as Ryan Homes, NVHomes and Fox Ridge Homes, should pay homeowners for defective construction and misrepresentations about the quality of the complex's construction, said attorney T. Allen Mott, of the Baltimore law firm Cowie & Mott.

Carl O. Snowden, the civil rights chief for the state attorney general, was found guilty Tuesday on a misdemeanor marijuana possession charge after being found in April in a car that police said reeked of the drug. Judge Michael W. Reed sentenced Snowden, 59, on the spot to a 60-day suspended prison term and a year's probation with drug and alcohol screening, and ordered him to repay court costs. He will have an opportunity after successfully completing the year's probation to overturn the conviction.

It was Jury Duty: Celebrity Edition in Baltimore Circuit Court on Tuesday. Both Michael Phelps and Duff Goldman had their numbers picked for the jury pool at the downtown courthouse. Phelps' presence created such a buzz that other prospective jurors and employees throughout the courthouse started streaming in to take his picture, according to Maj. Sam Cogen of the sheriff's office. “People were using their cell phones [to take pictures], bothering him - including police,” Cogen said.

Carl O. Snowden, the civil rights chief at the Maryland Office of the Attorney General, will go before a Baltimore jury Friday afternoon on marijuana charges. Snowden, 59, was arrested in April, along with Anthony Hill, 29. Officers testified before the trial began that they approached Snowden's car when it was parked in Druid Hill Park, just off Reisterstown road. They said they found a brown cigar containing what they thought was marijuana as well as a plastic bag they believed they contained more in Hill's pocket.

The Bowie State University student charged with fatally slashing her randomly assigned roommate in their shared suite last year was acquitted Thursday of every charge against her, as jurors apparently believed she was acting to protect herself in a sprawling melee. After about 21/2 hours of deliberation, jurors found Alexis Simpson, 20, not guilty of first-degree murder and a host of lesser charges in the September 2011 slaying of 18-year-old Dominique Frazier. They rejected even the idea that Simpson acted in a grossly negligent way in the death.

One of our articles has quoted a gentleman saying "jerry-rigged," and of course we let that stand. Our job is to report what people do and say; making them look good is a flack's task.  But if you wish to be precise, you will observe a distinction between jury-rigged  and jerry-built , even though the two terms are frequently confused.  Any thing that is jury-rigged  is an improvised solution to a problem. It's originally a nautical expression, deriving, the Oxford English Dictionary says, from jury-mast , a temporary mast put up to replace one that has broken off or been swept away.

The Exxon Mobil Corp. asked Maryland's highest court Monday to erase most of the more than $1.5 billion awarded in two lawsuits over a large gasoline spill that Jacksonville residents claimed polluted their well water, left them fearful of getting cancer and made their property worthless. The oil giant's attorneys asked that new trials be held only on property value issues. That would leave the corporation and homeowners to argue over which homeowners to compensate for losses in property value.

The owner of Middle River's Bengies Drive-In Theatre is appealing a judge's decision to set aside a jury award of $838,000 in a case involving lights from a nearby Royal Farms store. An attorney for Bengies owner D. Edward Vogel said the appeal of Baltimore Circuit Judge Robert Cahill's ruling was filed this week. In his Sept. 13 order, Cahill dismissed a jury's finding that light from the Royal Farms store interfered with operation of the 56-year-old Bengies. In his opinion, Cahill said Vogel and his attorneys did not provide enough evidence to back up such a claim.

A Baltimore County man was found guilty on Tuesday of murdering his girlfriend's boss in 2008, according to a statement from the state's attorney's office. A jury convicted Antoine M. Reed Jr., 33, in the death of Milton Barnes, who was shot in the head at an apartment management office at 6307 Monika Place in Woodlawn on June 24, 2008. Barnes, 36, was the manager of the Hunter's Crossing Apartments and had been having difficulties with an employee, who had been dating Reed, the statement said.