Plaintiffs

M aryland dodged a proverbial bullet last month when the Court of Appeals upheld the state's long-standing cap on noneconomic damages in most medical liability cases. The ruling allows some control over large damage awards that can drive up the cost of health care. But that's hardly cause for celebration. Medical malpractice litigation is still an area that operates as a kind of high-stakes lottery where patients and medical practitioners alike win or lose on the most capricious of circumstances - actual injury and physician malpractice not always proving to be significant factors.

A proposed settlement that could net consumers $5 million in refunds and coupons from the nation's largest poultry producer moved a step closer to fruition Friday when a federal judge signed off on the preliminary agreement. Judge Richard D. Bennett repeatedly expressed concerns about the $3 million in plaintiffs' attorneys' fees and court costs that could be paid by Tyson Foods under the terms of the settlement. Bennett said he would be hard-pressed to sign off on what he called such a disproportionate scale, with the plaintiffs' counsel set to get about 37.5 percent of the total, with consumers' refunds capped at $50. Consumer lawsuits were filed across the country in 2008 and later consolidated in Baltimore, accusing Tyson of lying about the drugs that go into its birds.

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.

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.

W ill a recent lawsuit result in Congress' biggest upheaval in almost 100 years? Probably not, but that's the hope of the parties who brought the case. They think that the House of Representatives is unconstitutional in its current form and that the only solution is to drastically increase its size. This effort, while quixotic, is not thoroughly misguided. The House should, in fact be larger - but a lawsuit is the wrong way to reach that goal. The plaintiffs, citizens of Delaware, Mississippi, Montana, South Dakota, and Utah, argue that the House's 435 seats are not fairly distributed among the states.

For the past five months, spectators in a Baltimore County courtroom watched as dozens of families who live near a Jacksonville service station that leaked thousands of gallons of gasoline into the community's groundwater made their case against Exxon Mobil Corp. One especially interested onlooker at the trial, which concluded Thursday with a jury awarding $150 million to the plaintiffs, was attorney Theodore M. Flerlage Jr. "It's always interesting to see how another firm addresses a situation," said Flerlage, who is with the Peter G. Angelos law firm.

The e-mail message was written in February 2007, a year after an underground leak at an Exxon gas station in northern Baltimore County fouled wells and hammered property values. After cleanup efforts are completed, "no one will remember Phoenix," the message said, referring to the address of the Jacksonville area where the spill occurred. "Just another notch in the tree of life." Written by an Exxon Mobil Corp. project manager to a colleague, the text was enlarged and projected onto a screen in a Towson courtroom yesterday by Stephen L. Snyder, a lawyer for 309 residents who are suing the oil company for at least $1 billion in Baltimore County Circuit Court.