Johns Hopkins lawsuit highlights questions about schools’ obligations to donors - The Washington Post

Johns Hopkins lawsuit highlights questions about schools’ obligations to donors - The Washington Post: It took two years to negotiate the deal. But in the end, her family says, Elizabeth Beall Banks, well known in Montgomery County for her opposition to development, sold the 138-acre parcel where she raised Black Angus cattle to Johns Hopkins University for one simple reason: She believed that officials shared her vision for what would become of her beloved farm.

Now, seven years after Banks’s death, her heirs have taken Hopkins to court, alleging that the university has violated the terms of the deal it made with Banks 23 years ago. University officials maintain that they are abiding by Banks’s wishes as outlined in the two-page agreement.