Legal Aid Bureau

After a small fire on the second floor of her Eastport Terrace home last summer, Devera Pounds was told by the Annapolis Housing Authority to remove her window air conditioner and deep freezer. She did so without question but now wonders why. Pounds is preparing to file a grievance against the authority. And she's not alone. "As soon as you buy something to make you comfortable, they take it," said Pounds, who has lived at the public housing development with her two sons and two grandsons for almost three years.

After a small fire on the second floor of her Eastport Terrace home last summer, Devera Pounds was told by the Annapolis Housing Authority to remove her window air conditioner and deep freezer. She did so without question but now wonders why. Pounds is preparing to file a grievance against the authority. And she's not alone. "As soon as you buy something to make you comfortable, they take it," said Pounds, who has lived at the public housing development with her two sons and two grandsons for almost three years.

Mission: Established in 1911, the Legal Aid Bureau is a nonprofit law firm that provides free civil legal services to low-income people statewide from 13 offices. The bureau serves clients who have problems that affect their basic survival, such as family dysfunction, denial of benefits for medical care, income maintenance or food stamps, and threat of eviction. Legal intervention can alleviate these problems or prevent them from escalating to homelessness, hunger, abuse, neglect and violence.

Baltimore's deputy comptroller, Shirley A. Williams, has taken an administrative job with the city Law Department and is being replaced by B. Harriette Taylor, the acting director of the Legal Aid Bureau.Williams, a longtime city employee who was acting city comptroller for nearly two years after Jacqueline F. McLean resigned in a corruption scandal in 1994, will head the Law Department's new management division. Her responsibilities will include overseeing the budget and directing the Equal Opportunity Compliance Office.

ROSEDALE -- The Baltimore County Legal Aid Bureau will hold a community forum Friday for people with limited income to discuss their legal needs with agency lawyers. Four of the county's eight Legal Aid attorneys will take part in the meeting, from 10: 30 a.m. to 12: 30 p.m. at the Rosedale Library, 6105 Kenwood Ave.Information: 296-6705.Pub Date: 4/17/96

"If people don't have access to the courts, there's more of a tendency to take the law into their own hands," Charles H. Dorsey Jr. once said, "and I think that is detrimental to everybody in this society." Until his death last Friday of a heart attack at age 64, Mr. Dorsey served for 21 years as executive director of Maryland's Legal Aid Bureau, devoting his life to the principle that poor people were no less entitled to legal representation than the rich.During his long career as head of the Legal Aid Bureau, a nonprofit organization providing civil legal services to the poor, Mr. Dorsey and his staff won many important victories on behalf of poor clients.

An article in yesterday's editions of The Sun incorrectly indicated the time of funeral services for Charles H. Dorsey Jr. A Mass of Christian burial will be offered at 9:30 a.m. tomorrow at the Basilica of the Assumption, 400 Cathedral St., Baltimore. The Sun regrets the error.Charles H. Dorsey Jr., a defender of legal rights for the poor during 21 years as executive director of Maryland's Legal Aid Bureau, died of a heart attack Friday at Liberty Medical Center. He was 64."He had a zest for justice for all people.

A three-year legal battle between Maryland Legal Aid Bureau Inc. attorneys and their bosses is intensifying, paralyzing the operations of the agency that is supposed to help Maryland's disadvantaged resolve their legal disputes, attorneys in and outside of the group said yesterday.The managers of the bureau said yesterday they will appeal an administrative law judge's finding that they violated labor laws. And while union negotiators tangle with management on that front, union members are waging an internal war: The head of the Baltimore offices of the National Labor Relations Board said he will decide by tomorrow the fate of a petition by some staff members for a vote on whether to get rid of the union.

A family law service for moderate-income residents has been expanded into Carroll County.The Maryland Volunteer Lawyers Service -- a nonprofit, statewide group of attorneys that also provides civil legal assistance for low-income residents -- began the Carroll County program in mid-October to help families with divorce, custody, adoption or visitation cases, said Winifred Borden, executive director.The service group also expanded the program into Calvert, Caroline, Cecil, Charles, Garrett, Howard, Somerset and Worcester counties last month.