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On Thursday, July 10, a federal court jury sitting in Columbus, Ohio returned verdicts totalling $11 million against the City of Zanesville, Ohio, Muskingum County, Ohio, and the East Muskingum Water Authority for illegally denying water service to a predominantly African-American community on the basis of race. Jerry Kennedy, et al. v. City of Zanesville, Ohio, et al. Case No. 2:03-cv-01047, S.D. Ohio. The sixty-seven plaintiffs in the case alleged that the City of Zanesville, Muskingum County, and the East Muskingum Water Authority refused to provide them public water service for over fifty years because they live in the one predominantly African-American neighborhood in a virtually all-white county. Each one of the sixty-seven individual plaintiffs described the hardships caused by living with the continuous practice of discrimination and without water for up to five decades. The jury also awarded $80,000 in damages to Fair Housing Advocates Association, a fair housing agency that assisted the plaintiffs by conducting an investigation and assisting them with their administrative complaints before the Ohio Civil Rights Commission. The Ohio Civil Rights Commission was also a plaintiff in the case, and received a verdict in its favor.

The plaintiffs' legal team was led by Relman & Dane, PLLC. Assisting the Relman & Dane lawyers were attorneys from Jones Day, the Equal Justice Foundation, the Washington Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights, and Cooper & Walinski. The Ohio Civil Rights Commission was represented by the Office of the Ohio Attorney General.

• To read a copy of the Ohio Attorney General's press release following the verdicts, please click here.
• "Racism ruled, jury finds: Mostly black neighborhood near Zanesville denied water because of color; city, county ordered to pay $10.9 million," Columbus Dispatch (July 11, 2008)
• "For a Recently Plumbed Neighborhood, Validation in a Verdict," The New York Times (August 11, 2008)

Relman & Dane represents the City of Baltimore in its groundbreaking lawsuit under the Fair Housing Act against Wells Fargo Bank. In Mayor and City Council of Baltimore v. Wells Fargo Bank N.A. et al., filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, the City of Baltimore alleges that Wells Fargo Bank intentionally targeted Baltimore’s minority communities for predatory loans with discriminatory and unfair terms. Wells Fargo's practices have allegedly resulted in extraordinarily high rates of foreclosure in Baltimore’s minority neighborhoods – foreclosures that ultimately cost the City millions of dollars in lost tax revenues, added fire and police costs, court administrative costs, and social programs needed to maintain stable and healthy neighborhoods. This is the first lawsuit in the nation filed by a municipality seeking to recover the costs of foreclosure caused by allegedly racially discriminatory lending practices.

• To download a copy of the complaint, please click here.
• To download a copy of the City of Baltimore's Brief in Opposition to Wells Fargo's Motion to Dismiss, please click here.
• "Baltimore is Suing Bank Over Foreclosure Crisis" The New York Times (January 8, 2008)
• "Suspect foreclosures" The Baltimore Sun (January 10, 2008)

Relman & Dane announces:

• Relman & Dane welcomes Shalini Goel as the 2007-2008 Relman Civil Rights Fellow.

• Relman & Dane welcomes Tom Keary.

• To learn more about our attorneys and their fair housing work, click here.

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