News summary

Daily Record, The (Baltimore), Apr 16, 2007 by The Daily Record

Digi-Data's new project

Columbia-based Digi-Data Corp., which manufactures data storage systems, said it teamed with Concentia Digital Inc., also of Columbia, a digital content management services company, to provide ArchivaSports , a Concentia division, with a high bandwidth storage system. ArchivaSports' Web-based video archive system provides a centralized online warehouse to store, search, re-use and maintain data on every aspect of a sporting event. The system is provided on a subscription basis. and sites can be customized for the user.

'Apes' case rejected

The Supreme Court has declined to hear the case of a Maryland man who claims he was fired in retaliation for complaining about a co- worker's racist statement while watching television footage of the Washington, D.C.-area snipers. The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, reviewing the case en banc, narrowly voted to throw out Robert L. Jordan's suit against his employers, Alternative Resources Corp. and International Business Machines Corp. The appeals court held that a reasonable person could not believe a single comment - the co-worker's exclamation that "They should put those two black monkeys in a cage with a bunch of black apes and let the apes f-k them" - created a hostile work environment under federal law. Monday morning, the Supreme Court, minus Justice Stephen G. Breyer, decided not to grant certiorari.

Death denies divorce

A Pennsylvania appeals court refused to issue a posthumous divorce decree to a dentist murdered the day before he was to sign his final divorce papers. The Superior Court's ruling Thursday upheld an Indiana County judge's ruling that a divorce was unnecessary because Dr. John Yelenic's marriage ended with his death. Yelenic, 39, was found murdered in his Blairsville home on April 13, 2006 - a crime that has not been solved. Yelenic and his wife, Michele, separated in 2002 and had agreed to the divorce and a property settlement. Yelenic's attorney, Effie Alexander, had asked a judge to issue the divorce decree because he believed the divorce was important to Yelenic. The request was mostly symbolic, because the couple had already decided how to split up their property.

Inmates bug court

Three prisoners serving potential life sentences in Colorado say their lives have been threatened - by mosquitoes. The inmates at Walsenburg and Limon prisons sued, saying they were at risk of contacting West Nile virus or other diseases after they were bitten repeatedly by mosquitoes and suffered "the emotional and mental distress of whether or not each mosquito's bite would result in death or serious bodily injury." "Each attack constituted bodily injury, which the (Department of Corrections) had the power to prevent, but consciously elected not to," wrote inmates Stephen G. Glover, Alan Smith and Michael Freeman, acting as their own attorneys. But the Colorado Court of Appeals swatted down their case and upheld a lower court's decision to throw their case out.