Peter Angelos
Peter G. Angelos (born July 4, 1929 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) is an American trial lawyer and the current owner of the Baltimore Orioles, a baseball team in the American League East Division. His official titles with the club are Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer. He led a group of investors that purchased the team in 1993 for $173 million from Eli Jacobs.
Biography
Angelos is a graduate of Eastern College of Commerce and Law and the University of Baltimore School of Law, where he was class valedictorian. He began work as a criminal defense lawyer following graduation. For most of his legal career Angelos made a living as a lawyer representing Baltimore labor unions and their members in his own private practice, which he founded in 1961. Beginning in the 1980s, Angelos refashioned his firm from criminal law to civil class action suits. In 1982, his wealth and law firm expanded exponentially when he represented a large number of plaintiffs in asbestos litigation and won. He reportedly made over $100 million on this single case. Angelos was also enormously successful in representing the state of Maryland as lead attorney in a suit against Philip Morris and suing Wyeth, the makers of the diet pill fen-phen. It was after this that he became a major player in the Baltimore community. Angelos's law firm currently has offices in Baltimore, Philadelphia, Cumberland, Maryland, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Wilmington, Delaware, and Knoxville, Tennessee.[1]
A lifelong Democrat, he held a seat on Baltimore City Council from 1959 to 1963. Angelos ran for mayor of Baltimore in 1964 as an independent, but lost with less than 10% of the vote. Three times in the 1960s he unsuccessfully challenged Republican incumbents in the Maryland Legislature. He recently has become involved in politics again, publicly supporting Republican gubernatorial incumbent Bob Ehrlich and criticizing 2006 Democratic candidate, now governor, Martin J. O'Malley. However, it is speculated that Angelos's support for the Republican is more a business move than a political move, because O'Malley encouraged the move of the Montreal Expos to Washington, DC, a move which threatened the Orioles monopoly on the Baltimore-Washington market.
He was named "Marylander of the Year" by the Baltimore Sun [2], in 1998. The Sun went even further, writing "Measured by professional accomplishments and contributions to his city and region, he is the Marylander of this decade."
Angelos was awarded the Ellis Island Medal of Honor in 1996.[3]