The dispute was over a loan and a shed full of bowling equipment. The opposing lawyers couldn't agree. So Judge Donald J. Gilmore offered an unusual solution: Flip a coin.
Judge Gilmore is one of the best known of the state's 25 traveling judges-for-hire, in part because he's the judge in the case of Jacqueline McLean, the former Baltimore comptroller who's to be sentenced today.
And he's not the type to shy away from unconventional ways of resolving disputes.
"If you're that close, there comes a time in a case that you're not going to reach a logical amount," the 62-year-old retired circuit judge from Carroll County told the two attorneys during a recent conference to settle the disputed loan case in Howard County.
"It's better than shooting it out in the streets."
Although in this case the lawyers didn't go through with the coin flip, they did quickly agree to a $375 settlement -- and remove one more case from Howard County's strained civil docket.
Settlement conferences are one of the ways in which courts across Maryland -- particularly those in Baltimore and its fast-growing suburban counties -- are trying to relieve the logjams of cases crowding their dockets.
"We're a very litigious society," said George Riggin Jr., the state court administrator.
"People file an awful lot of lawsuits, to the point where the court's resources are strained."
Only about 5 percent of all civil cases go to trial. But the others linger on dockets long enough to slow down the entire court machinery. Early settlements ease dockets, avoid acrimony and save litigants lawyer fees.
Most Baltimore-area circuit courts have settlement programs tailored to their needs:
* Anne Arundel County uses about 70 lawyers -- called "facilitators" -- to mediate civil and domestic cases. The court also has two paid mediators to resolve child custody and visitation cases.
* A retired judge travels to Carroll County twice a month for settlement conferences.
* Baltimore uses lawyers and judges in daily meetings with litigants to ease the civil docket.
Court officials say they use settlement conferences for one simple reason: They work.
Baltimore County Circuit Court, for example, was able to remove nearly 1,800 cases from its docket in 1992 by getting litigants to settle disputes without a trial.
And Howard court officials credit settlement conferences, along with a new scheduling system, with reducing the amount of time it takes for civil cases to go to trial.
Until 1992, it took an average of three years for civil cases to go to trial, said Howard Circuit Court Administrator John Shatto. Now, it takes about 10 months, even though the number of cases filed has stayed about the same.
Judge Gilmore and the state's other 24 retired judges-for-hire are permitted to preside over settlement conferences, fill in for ill judges and handle cases that pose a conflict for other judges. Conflicts brought the judge to Baltimore this year for two high-profile cases.
He was brought in on the theft and misconduct case against Ms. McLean, the city's former comptroller, after some City Council members had a questionable meeting with the former judge in the case. And when William H. Murphy Jr., a prominent attorney and former judge, was accused of striking his wife, Judge Gilmore presided, rather than judges with whom Mr. Murphy often had worked.
Judge Gilmore, who retired from the Carroll County bench in 1990, started handling weekly Howard County settlement conferences 17 months ago. Since then, he's resolved 328 of 614 lawsuits he's tackled.
He retired because he started finding himself falling asleep while presiding over cases as a result of chemotherapy treatment for colon cancer, he said. "I knew I couldn't handle the trial work. People deserved better than that," he said.
Last May, Judge Gilmore underwent surgery for cancer again, this time in his stomach. He took a month off work, but then returned to his routine. "That's the quickest way to the grave I know," he said, "sitting around and doing nothing."
Howard court officials say Judge Gilmore has been successful because he combines experience with an even-handed personality that allows each party in a case to feel that it has had a chance to air its views. "He can find that thread that runs through every party in a case," said John Shatto, the Howard Circuit Court administrator. "He can take the thread and turn it into a settlement."
Judge Gilmore attributes his success to getting the attorneys to focus on the issues in their cases and finding what it takes to resolve those issues. "Every case boils down to a final issue," he said. "It's like an hourglass sifting down to one point."
The civil cases that Judge Gilmore handles range from the simple -- such as the dispute over the bowling equipment -- to the complex. Most settlement conferences last about a half-hour.
He said the most difficult case he's handled was a lawsuit filed by the Ryland Group, a Columbia-based homebuilder, that sued 12 companies in 1991 over faulty fire-resistant plywood used in more than 6,000 houses.
The court was girded for an eight-week trial, when Judge Gilmore in January brought together the parties -- a total of 14 attorneys -- for an eight-hour conference.
Stephen Mysliwiec, a Washington attorney for Ryland, said Judge Gilmore played a key role in reaching the undisclosed settlement terms by showing the attorneys how jurors would react to their arguments and evidence.
"He's got a very down-to-earth style," Mr. Mysliwiec said. "He doesn't let the fact that he's a judge lord over the parties."
Despite its complexity and its potential for a multimillion-dollar settlement, the Ryland suit was just another case to Judge Gilmore.
"The big numbers don't influence my approach," he said. "The big thing is to make people feel they've had their day."