Baltimore County now favors unsealing all documents related to a 2-year-old lawsuit that its most recent inspector general filed against a former county employee, according to county spokesman Dakarai Turner.

The county, which had sought to keep the documents out of public view, stated its reversal in a court filing Thursday, Turner said. That filing was in response to a judge’s order that the parties involved in the case respond to him by May 22 about making the information public.

The case began in April 2024, when Kelly Madigan, who was then Baltimore County‘s inspector general, sued Patrick Murray, who had been then-County Executive Johnny Olszewski Jr.’s chief of staff. When the suit was filed, Murray had been gone from his county job for more than a year.

The suit stemmed from a disagreement over what Murray told Madigan during breakfast at a Towson coffeehouse on March 30, 2021. Madigan believed Murray was trying to shut down an investigation into how the county was handling a tennis barn that developer David Cordish wanted to build; Murray believed he was giving Madigan constructive criticism . (David Cordish is The Baltimore Banner’s landlord.)

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Eventually, for reasons that have not been explained, the county paid Murray $100,000 to settle the suit. It also paid a private attorney $66,000 to represent Madigan and $25,000 to write a report at the center of the litigation.

The county has racked up more legal fees as it continues to respond to filings from former county Administrative Officer Fred Homan, who is trying to get the case opened because, he says, it’s in the public interest.

The judge who agreed to the county’s earlier request for sealing, Keith Truffer, also agreed — unusally — to shield all records related to the case from Maryland Public Information Act requests.

Homan filed his litigation after reading about the sealed case in The Banner, which first reported it in August 2025.

Sealing government records such as those in the Madigan/Murray litigation is rare. Former Baltimore City Solicitor André Davis called the sealing “a pretty extraordinary thing.”

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Madigan, who was appointed Howard County’s first inspector general earlier this year, did not return calls seeking comment. Her deputy inspector general, Steve Quisenberry, who has been acting as the inspector general since she departed, declined to comment. Skip Cornbrooks, the attorney Baltimore County hired to represent Madigan in the litigation, did not return multiple emails for comment.

Quisenberry was on the selection committee in Howard County that chose Madigan, who then appointed him to her old job. Two officials involved in the selection process filed a complaint about Quisenberry’s role with the Howard County Ethics Board; earlier this month, the board dismissed the complaint.

The next step is for Murray to file his response. The deadline for that is May 22. After that, the judge could call a settlement conference to discuss any outstanding matters, or he could simply order the case unsealed.

Reached Monday, Murray said his attorney would file a similar document to Baltimore County‘s, stating that he had no objection to the entire file being unsealed.

“The record should be unsealed in its entirety and without redactions,” Murray said, “which I hope will catalyze a serious conversation about holding current officials accountable for their role in this fiasco.”