Settlement

Internal Fannie Mae documents show the mortgage financier was about to launch a principal reduction program in 2010 after determining that it would save taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars, a Baltimore congressman says -- contradicting claims by Fannie's regulator that such a move would be costly. U.S. Reps. Elijah E. Cummings of Baltimore and John F. Tierney of Massachusetts, Democrats who sit on the House Committee on Oversight & Government Reform, sent a joint letter Tuesday to regulator Edward DeMarco demanding more information about why the program was "mysteriously terminated" in July 2010.

Marylanders received more than $1.3 billion in relief from the National Mortgage Settlement during a 12-month period, Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler announced Tuesday. That assistance went to nearly 17,000 mortgage borrowers between March 1, 2012 and March 31, 2013, Gansler said. The total amount allocated so far is $400 million more than the original estimate of the settlement's total financial relief. Plus, the relief amount announced Tuesday does not include one-time cash payments that will soon be made to borrowers who lost their homes to foreclosure in the period from 2008 through 2011 and whose mortgages were serviced by one of the five settling banks, Gansler said.

In a settlement with Gov. Martin O'Malley over the proposed buyout of Constellation Energy Group, Exelon Corp. has promised to develop significantly more natural gas, wind and solar power in Maryland, give more money to help low-income customers and provide more protections for Baltimore Gas and Electric. Provisions of the settlement include: •Up to 300 megawatts in new power generation in Maryland within 10 years. That includes: —10 megawatts to 25 megawatts from poultry manure plant, the first in the state.

Nearly 250 of the patients who accused cardiologist Dr. Mark Midei of performing unnecessary stent procedures at St. Joseph Medical Center settled their lawsuits against him Thursday, a major step forward in one of the largest medical malpractice cases in state history. The agreement was announced in Baltimore County Circuit Court, where lawyers for Midei, the Towson hospital, its former owner and 21 of the patients have been making arguments for several weeks in the cardiologist's first civil trial.

Rep. Elijah E. Cummings is not happy that the Federal Reserve Board and the Office of the Comptroller of Currency settled with 10 mortgage servicers this week, putting an end to the Independent Foreclosure Review that the government required the firms to organize. “I am deeply disappointed that the OCC and the Federal Reserve finalized this settlement and effectively terminated the Independent Foreclosure Review process before providing Congress answers to serious questions about how this settlement amount was determined, who these funds will go to, and what will happen to other families who were abused by these mortgage servicing companies, but have not yet had their cases reviewed,” said Cummings, ranking member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, in a statement following the settlement announcement Monday.

Baltimore International College has reached a legal settlement that will allow it to remain accredited until the end of the year, when officials expect the downtown culinary college to be taken over by Virginia-based Stratford University. Baltimore International College has reached a legal settlement that will allow it to remain accredited until the end of the year, when officials expect the downtown culinary school to be taken over by Virginia-based Stratford University. The settlement ended a court battle between Baltimore International and the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, which planned to strip the college of its accreditation at the end of August — a move that could have forced the school to close.

Anti-abortion advocates will gather at 10 a.m. Monday outside the Maryland State Police Headquarters in Pikesville to publicly discuss a $385,000 settlement involving both parties. The activists and their attorneys will discuss details of the case, which they say include a requirement that all state troopers receive additional training. The activists' federal lawsuit was over the August 2008 arrests of 18 protesters with Baltimore-based Defend Life during a Bel Air rally.

Maryland financial regulators will take part in the effort to make sure the big banks that recently settled allegations of widespread foreclosure misconduct live up to the agreement they signed. Anne Balcer Norton, deputy commissioner of financial regulation at the state Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation, said the agency has been named to the monitoring committee for the nationwide settlement. It's the only state bank regulator on the committee, she said. "I'm pleased that we get a seat at the table," she said, adding that the agency has the "ground-level perspective" of what homeowners are going through.

Maryland will get nearly $10,000 as part of a national settlement involving kickbacks to doctors to encourage them to implant pacemakers and implantable cardioverter defibrillators in patients, Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler announced Thursday. Medtronic Inc, the developer of the medical devices, settled with the federal government for $23.5 million. Medtronic paid physicians who agreed to participate in clinical studies or registries involving their pacemakers and ICDs, according to the agreement.

State regulators proposed on Wednesday that Verizon's ability to raise rates on some basic telephone services be directly tied to the telecommunications giant's efforts to improve customer service – a potential outcome that would be a regulatory first in Maryland. The proposed order from the Maryland Public Service Commission comes amidst several ongoing cases dealing with complaints from tens of thousands of customers who experienced lengthy delays in customer service in 2007 and 2008.

The O'Malley administration has settled a class action lawsuit brought by critics who accused the state of failing low-income and disabled Marylanders by regularly taking nearly a year to approve medical assistance applications as part of a severe backlog. The settlement means the Maryland Department of Human Resources will process claims faster and work to eliminate a backlog of more than 9,000 delayed cases, according to the Public Justice Center, the Homeless Persons Representation Project and the National Center for Law and Economic Justice, the organizations that filed suit.

A mortgage lender based in Utah has agreed to pay a Baltimore woman $13,000 for denying her a loan because she was pregnant and on maternity leave, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development announced Tuesday. Primary Residential Mortgage Inc., based in Salt Lake City, also agreed to adopt a parental leave policy, to ensure its employees are complying with family status provisions of the Fair Housing Act, which prevents lending discrimination based on other applicant traits including sex, race and religion.

The city of Baltimore on Wednesday approved a $200,000 settlement with the family of a 14-year-old Randallstown girl, Deanna Green, who was electrocuted in 2006 while stretching during a church softball game in Druid Hill Park. "As a mother, it was a terrible tragedy," Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said. "I can't even imagine the pain that Deanna's family and her parents have gone through. The city has done a lot since 2006, when this incident happened, to make sure that something like this doesn't happen again.

The National Mortgage Settlement's relief is not reaching enough Maryland homeowners and is not as effective as it could be in keeping people in their homes, the Maryland Consumer Rights Coalition said Tuesday. “The number of Maryland families facing new foreclosures continues to dwarf those getting help under the settlement,” said Marceline White, the group's executive director, in a statement. Between March 1, 2012 and the end of last year, about 14,200 homeowners received assistance through the settlement, intended to resolve accusations by 49 states and the federal government that five major mortgage servicers abused borrowers during the foreclosure process.

The Maryland Attorney General's office in conjunction with the federal government and 46 other states has reached a $48 million settlement with a Texas drug company that marketed an ointment to treat bedsores even though it wasn't approved by the Food and Drug Administration. Healthpoint Ltd and general partner DFB Pharmaceuticals marketed the drug Xenaderm to nursing homes. The ointment was modeled after a drug made prior to 1962 that the FDA never reviewed. In the 1970s, the FDA determined the principal ingredient in Xenaderm was "less than effective.

Maryland homeowners have received over $1.1 billion in assistance from the National Mortgage Settlement, according to a report released Thursday by the settlement's court-appointed monitor. Just over 14,000 homeowners in the state, between March 1, 2012 and the end of the year, received help from the settlement with five major mortgage servicers that were accused of abusive foreclosure practices. The average amount of relief, including mortgage modifications and short sale assistance, was $79,082, the monitor's report said.

Hundreds of families living in some of Baltimore's most impoverished neighborhoods will get to move to better conditions under a proposed settlement that could finally resolve a fair housing case dating back to 1995. Attorneys representing current and former public housing residents filed the settlement, which still has to be approved by a judge, in U.S. District Court late Friday. They hope the agreement with the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development will finally end more than 70 years of housing segregation that they say the government helped exacerbate.

Attorneys General in Maryland and 29 other states have reached a $29 million settlement with Toyota Motor Corp. designed to strengthen protections for consumers impacted by safety defects and prevent miscommunication over faulty equipment. Toyota had failed to warn consumers in a timely manner about known problems with unintended acceleration caused by sticky accelerator pedals and floor mat pedal entrapment, according to a complaint filed Thursday by the Maryland AG's Consumer Protection Division.

As President Barack Obama begins his second term, he faces a series of Middle East challenges far more daunting than when he began his presidency in 2009. These problems include: •what to do about the Arab-Israeli conflict, with peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority still frozen; •whether to intervene in the civil war in Syria, which has now claimed more than 60,000 lives, with the opposition to the Assad regime becoming more Islamist; •how to manage relations with an increasingly Islamist regime in Egypt in such a way that the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty is not endangered; •how to handle an Iraq on the verge of multiple civil wars, one between the Arabs and the Kurds and the other between Sunnis and Shiites; •how to deal with al-Qaida activity in both Yemen and North Africa (Mali and Algeria)