CSA gives added weight to black-mold opinion

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CSA gives added weight to black-mold opinion

Daily Record - Baltimore,MD*

BARBARA GRZINCIC

Daily Record Managing Editor/Law

March 4, 2008

http://www.mddailyrecord.com/article.cfm?id=4560 & type=UTTM

Following its January decision affirming a $375,000 black-mold

verdict against the Housing Authority of Baltimore City, the Court

of Special Appeals reissued it Tuesday it as a reported opinion.

The move, which was requested by E. Nevin of the Law Offices

of T. Nicholl, allows the opinion to be cited as precedent in

future disputes.

Nevin represented three people with disabilities who lived in HABC's

Homewood House. Roy, Louise Bills and nie Pratt claimed

that poor maintenance of the roof and ventilation system led to the

formation of stachybotrys and penicillum/aspergillus, which left

them with respiratory and neurological problems.

In September 2006, the jury awarded Pratt, then 55, $175,000 in non-

economic damages. Bills and Roy, both in their 60s, won damages of

$100,000 each. All three were awarded a small amount of economic

damages.

On appeal, HABC did not dispute the building's problems; instead,

it " focused its defense on the [residents'] proof of the causal

connection between the mold in 2200 Homewood Avenue and the medical

conditions [they] suffered, " retired Judge E. Moylan wrote

for the panel, to which he was specially assigned.

The appellate court rejected HABC's challenges based on the

sufficiency of the evidence, the need for a jury instruction

regarding the basis of an expert's opinion, and the size of the

verdicts, which the Housing Authority had called " shocking and

excessive. "