Plaintiffs

The oversized windows of Hans Wilhelmsen's house in Jacksonville command a view to the east of hills dotted with baled hay and stands of oak, maple and pine on the 70 acres he owns a mile south of where an Exxon station unleashed an underground flood of unleaded gasoline five years ago. Thirteen bison patrolled the fields then, but they're gone now, and Wilhelmsen is sure he knows why. "We saw six die at one time" about two years ago, Wilhelmsen said....

Johns Hopkins University's motion to dismiss a family's lawsuit over development plans for a Montgomery County farm was denied Friday evening, according to the plaintiffs. The suit claims that Hopkins' plan to construct high-rise buildings on the land violates an agreement the land's previous owner entered into with the university more than twenty years ago, according to a statement from plaintiffs, led by John Timothy Newell. Elizabeth Beall Banks and her siblings transferred the 138-acre Belward Farm to Hopkins with the expectation that development of the land, near Gaithersburg, would be limited to a low-rise campus.

Attorneys representing the 8,600 plaintiffs in the nation's largest consolidated asbestos personal injury trial finished presenting their case in Baltimore Circuit Court yesterday -- nine days ahead of schedule.The trial resumes May 4 with 32 days of testimony scheduled from the defense. Everyone was looking forward to the break."I'm going away on Saturday and I'm not going to tell anyone where I am," said Judge Marshall A. Levin, who has frequently found himself caught in the middle of attorneys' battles.

Some Jacksonville residents are, for the second time, asking a Maryland appeals court to reconsider its decision to reduce by more than half a $147 million jury verdict in a tainted-groundwater case. On Thursday, two days after the Court of Special Appeals denied the plaintiffs' first motion to reconsider the panel's February decision, attorneys filed a second request for the court to re-evaluate its conclusions. In February, the state's second-highest court rejected part of a jury's decision in a suit stemming from a gasoline leak in 2006 at anExxon Mobil Corp.filling station that contaminated the community's groundwater.

The Towson-based state Injured Workers' Insurance Fund has agreed to pay a half-million dollars to settle a lawsuit that claimed it was illegally taping telephone conversations with lawyers and their clients. Under terms of the agreement, signed yesterday by Baltimore County Circuit Judge Lawrence R. Daniels, plaintiffs Jack J. Schmerling, a Glen Burnie attorney, and Robbie L. Arnold, who had a claim pending before IWIF, will receive $15,000 and $5,000, respectively. The bulk of the money, $480,000, goes to the plaintiffs' lawyers for legal expenses.

Lawyers on both sides of the largest consolidation of asbestos personal-injury claims in U.S. history were trying to explain to a judge today how "secret" psychological profiles of prospective jurors were faxed from the defense to the plaintiffs.The lawyers spent most of yesterday trying to fashion an explanation for Baltimore Circuit Judge Marshall A. Levin, who is presiding over the trial consolidating 9,032 claims. At the end of the day, the fax incident was still a mystery.Levin was considering dismissing 51 potential jurors and beginning anew the arduous jury-selection process.

Attorneys representing the 8,600 plaintiffs in the nation's largest consolidated asbestos personal injury trial finished presenting their case in Baltimore Circuit Court yesterday -- nine days ahead of schedule.The trial will resume May 4 for a scheduled 32 days of testimony from the defense. Everyone was looking forward to the break."I'm going away on Saturday and I'm not going to tell anyone where I am," said Judge Marshall A. Levin, who has frequently found himself caught in the middle of attorneys' battles.

Two women who work for a State Farm insurance agent in Randallstown sued him and his corporate employer Tuesday, saying he repeatedly subjected them to sexual harassment, vile insults and a hostile work environment. Kristi Mitchell and Veronica Cobb are seeking at least $4 million in punitive damages from the agent, Obie Sorrell, and State Farm Annuity and Life Insurance Co., a Fortune 500 company based in Bloomington, Ill., that has 17,000 agents and 68,000 employees. Mitchell has been an office manager for State Farm since February 2002, and Cobb was hired in May as a customer-service manager.

It's an obscure bill to many, but one that has the attention of two of the most potent lobbying machines in Annapolis.On one side is an alliance of Maryland's most powerful business interests, insurance companies and many of the region's largest corporations, including Black & Decker Corp., Bell Atlantic Corp. and Baltimore Gas and Electric Co.On the other is the Maryland Trial Lawyers Association, whose members bring the lawsuits and negotiate the settlements for plaintiffs claiming injuries in everything from car crashes to medical malpractice cases.

A group of disabled workers is moving forward with a class-action lawsuit against the Social Security Administration alleging the federal agency discriminates against employees with disabilities by denying or limiting promotions. An office of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on Aug. 25 affirmed a 2008 decision by an EEOC administrative judge that certified the case as a class action, attorneys for the plaintiffs said Monday. The lawsuit seeks compensatory and other damages as well as changes in policies and procedures that will improve career opportunities for disabled employees, according attorneys for the plaintiffs.

The cleanup is supposed to be done in 2014, nearly eight years after 26,000 gallons of gasoline contaminated the groundwater in a northern Baltimore County neighborhood, but there's no end in sight for the legal wrangling. On Thursday, the state Court of Special Appeals rejected much of a $147 million jury verdict awarded in 2009 to about 90 homeowners who sued Exxon Mobil Corp., which owned the Jacksonville filling station where the gasoline seeped into the ground. The ruling has frustrated residents and diminished their hopes that they will ever be compensated for the property damage and emotional anguish suffered from having chemicals from unleaded gas flowing into their wells.

Baltimore's housing bureau does not have to pay a $2.6 million jury award to two siblings who say they were poisoned by lead paint when they lived in public residences as toddlers, a Maryland intermediate appellate court ruled Thursday. The decision, written by Judge Kathryn Grill Graeff of the Court of Special Appeals, hinges on the siblings not having filed notice of their claim within 180 days of their injury, as required by the state statute that governs personal injury suits against local governments.

The U.S. Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division has urged a federal court to side with a Howard County man in a lawsuit over his cellphone being seized by Baltimore police at the Preakness Stakes after he filmed officers making an arrest. The federal attorneys say the lawsuit "presents constitutional questions of great moment in this digital age. " They asked U.S. District Judge Benson Everett Legg to rule that citizens have a right to record police officers and that officers who seize and destroy recordings without a warrant or due process are violating the Fourth and 14th amendments.

Alumni and students from Maryland's four historically black universities took their long-held view that the state perpetuates racial segregation to court Tuesday, arguing that their institutions are underfunded. The federal lawsuit calls on the state to pay for improvements at the four schools — Morgan State, Coppin State, Bowie State and the University of Maryland Eastern Shore — that would make them more competitive with traditionally white peers. It also calls for the dismantling of programs at traditionally white schools that "unnecessarily" duplicate programs at the historically black universities.

The five weeks between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day are the equivalent of "Black Friday" for charities, which receive nearly half of their annual donations during the holiday season, according to a Charity Navigator survey. Colleges and universities are no exception. Higher education institutions always have been among America's most successful fundraisers. In fact, of the 400 nonprofit organizations that raised the most money last year, nearly a third were colleges and universities, the Chronicle of Philanthropy found.

Opponents of the $1.5 billion State Center project asked a Circuit Court judge Wednesday to dismiss the state's legal action against them, arguing that they have a First Amendment right to go to court to protest plans to redevelop the aging government office complex in midtown Baltimore. More than two hours of arguments by attorneys from both sides ended without a decision by Baltimore Circuit Judge Althea M. Handy. "We're allowed to object, and we're allowed to say we don't like your project," Alan M. Rifkin, an attorney for the redevelopment's opponents, said in his arguments.

Alumni and students from Maryland's four historically black universities took their long-held view that the state perpetuates racial segregation to court Tuesday, arguing that their institutions are underfunded. The federal lawsuit calls on the state to pay for improvements at the four schools — Morgan State, Coppin State, Bowie State and the University of Maryland Eastern Shore — that would make them more competitive with traditionally white peers. It also calls for the dismantling of programs at traditionally white schools that "unnecessarily" duplicate programs at the historically black universities.

A class action lawsuit challenging Baltimore's red-light-camera tickets, maintaining in part that the timing of traffic signals' yellow lights had been too short and resulted in fraudulent citations, has been dismissed by a city Circuit Court judge. The three plaintiffs who filed the lawsuit in August 2004 contended that the traffic signals in their cases had yellow lights lasting less than 3 seconds. One of the plaintiffs says 4 seconds is the standard. Violations carry a $75 fine but no points.

About 3,500 people will have about $10 million in personal debt forgiven by a collection agency, thanks to a settlement in federal court Friday that resolved a lawsuit over the agency's right to sue debtors in Maryland. As part of the settlement in U.S. District Court in Baltimore, an average $2,800 in debt will be erased for all 3,500 plaintiffs. Each of the two lead plaintiffs will receive a $2,000 payment as well. The settlement was reached between two Frederick men who led the class action suit — Jason Hauk and Freddy Velazquez — and LVNV Funding LLC, a Greenville, S.C.-based company that buys consumer debt from companies and often sues debtors to collect payment.

A Montgomery County judge has dismissed a lawsuit brought by a conservative foundation demanding that a Montgomery County community college end its practice of offering in-county tuition rates to illegal immigrants. A spokeswoman for Montgomery College, which has campuses in Rockville, Takoma Park and Germantown, told The Baltimore Sun last year that the school's policy is to offer the reduced tuition rate to anyone who can demonstrate that he or she lives in Montgomery County or graduated from a public high school there within the past three years.