Negligence

The article about the judgment in the death of Dondi Johnson Sr. ("$7.4 million judgment in wrongful-death suit," April 8) is very upsetting. We pay taxes so we can have officers to protect and serve, but this is just another case showing how Baltimore City police treat detainees with no respect, like they were animals and not human at all. I feel that officers Nicole Leake, Sendy Ferdinand and Michael Riser should pay the $7.4 million to...

The family of a bicyclist killed last year in a collision with a truck on Maryland Avenue in Baltimore has filed a $5 million wrongful-death lawsuit against the driver and his employer. On Aug. 4, John R. "Jack" Yates, 67, was riding his bike south on Maryland Avenue behind a truck when he became caught in the vehicle's rear wheels and was run over as it turned right on Lafayette Avenue, in the Charles North neighborhood, police said at the time. Yates died at the scene. The civil suit, filed Wednesday in Baltimore Circuit Court on behalf of Yates' wife, son and daughter, alleges negligence by driver Michael Dale Chandler of Severn and his employer, Potts & Callahan Inc., a demolition, excavation and equipment rental company, and seeks compensatory damages.

A judge handed down the maximum traffic violation fines Wednesday to two people blamed in a fatal accident in Glen Burnie. Bobbi L. Steiner, 25, of Glen Burnie and Jason R. Fisher, 42, of Derwood, Montgomery County, were fined $500 each and ordered into a driver improvement program after Anne Arundel District Judge Jonas D. Legum found Steiner guilty of negligent driving and Fisher of negligent driving and not controlling his truck's speed....

A Baltimore jury ordered an apartment management company to pay $6 million to an 8-year-old boy after determining that he suffered brain damage at his home as a result of exposure to lead-based paint. On Tuesday, the jury found Garden Village Reality Corp. and Regional Management, which operates the Garden Village Apartments where Antonio Ross Jr. lived, negligent. Experts testified during the five-day trial that Antonio lost IQ points and suffered cognitive deficits that affect the way he can recall and organize information in his mind.

An Anne Arundel County man pleaded guilty yesterday to charges that he caused a 2006 car crash that killed three people en route to dialysis treatment. Fontaine Pridgett, 47, of Cape St. Claire, pleaded guilty in Anne Arundel County Circuit Court to three counts of homicide by motor vehicle while intoxicated as part of a plea agreement. In exchange for his guilty plea, prosecutors dropped charges of negligent auto manslaughter, which would have sent him to prison for up to 30 years. Pridgett was drunk, high and driving with a revoked license when he lost control of a Mercedes sedan in Annapolis on Dec. 30 and collided with the van that was transporting four people to dialysis treatment, said Assistant State's Attorney Shelly Glenn.

After five days of wrenching testimony about the drowning death of a 5-year-old boy at Crofton Country Club, an Anne Arundel County jury awarded his parents more than $4 million in damages yesterday. Hunt Valley-based DRD Pool Service Inc., the club's pool management company, was found negligent for failing to adequately train its lifeguards and properly staff the pool. It was ordered to pay Thomas Freed and Debra Neagle Webber $2,000,076 each - the 76 dollars serving as a symbol of Connor Freed's birthday, which was July 6. At a news conference yesterday, Connor's parents, who had filed the wrongful-death lawsuit, expressed relief that the trial was over, a sense of satisfaction with the jury's ruling and a determination to ensure that their son's death would not be in vain.

A Hampstead man was charged yesterday with negligent manslaughter in a fatal crash in April in Eldersburg that killed the driver of a pickup truck, state police said. Joseph K. Nash, 44, of the 2400 block of Fairmount Road was charged with one count of negligent manslaughter by automobile, two counts of negligent homicide by automobile, driving while impaired by drugs, driving while impaired by a controlled dangerous substance, reckless driving, negligent driving and failure to drive right of center, according to court documents.

A U.S. military investigation has found that the Marine Corps chain of command in Iraq engaged in "willful negligence" in failing to investigate a November 2005 attack by Marines that killed 24 unarmed Iraqis, including several women and children, lawyers involved in the case said. The report, completed last summer but never made public, also found that a Marine Corps general and colonel in Iraq learned of the killings within hours of the incident, on Nov. 19, 2005, in the town of Haditha, but did not investigate.