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March 7, 2008

CSA gives added weight to black-mold opinion

BARBARA GRZINCIC

Daily Record Managing Editor/Law

March 4, 2008 6:55 PM

Correction: Due to incorrect information supplied by the Court of Special

Appeals, The Daily Record wrote that the court had reissued its January decision

in Housing Authority of Baltimore City v. Roy et al. as a reported opinion.

Court personnel say the opinion was inadvertently listed and posted to the

Judiciary’s Web site as a reported opinion. The Daily Record regrets the error.

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

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