Marshall A. Levin, 83; Judge Presided Over Asbestos Trial
Baltimore Circuit Court Judge Marshall A. Levin, 83, who presided over the nation’s largest mass trial, died Feb. 1 in Baltimore of complications from a stroke.
In the late 1980s, when consumers across the country were suing asbestos manufacturers and others over respiratory illnesses purportedly caused by the material, Levin was named to handle Baltimore’s vast number of asbestos cases. He decided to combine the cases for a single trial conducted in 1992, with a record 8,600 plaintiffs, 14 defendants, 40 lawyers and more than 7 million documents.
Born and reared in Baltimore, Levin was educated at its City College, the University of Virginia and Harvard Law School. During World War II, he enlisted in the Navy, rising to lieutenant in naval communications in Europe.
One of his early victories as an attorney was a case that resulted in the first racial integration of a public school in Maryland. He represented the Urban League in the 1952 case against the Baltimore school board over its ban against black students enrolling in the “A” course at Polytechnic Institute.
Levin was named to the bench in 1971, and had continued to hear cases until two weeks before his death.
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