Philly is still reeling from the horrific Center City building collapse last week. Every conversation I’ve had included both shock over the poor oversight of high-risk work like demolition and the conclusion that, surely, the City will be sued and will pay something towards the victims. Most everyone, including other lawyers who don’t do catastrophic injury work, are shocked to hear that it is unlikely that the City will be liable.   The primary cause of disaster is obvious: the work crew performed appallingly amateurish work. Taking down a building literally joined to other buildings isn’t rocket science, but ... Continue Reading

[Update II, April 30, 2012: As some media outlets have reported, our law firm now represents the Tezsla family. The below post was written and published before we were retained and should not be considered the family's or our law firm's official statement on the case.] [Update, February 24, 2012: The NTSB confirmed several facts this morning, including the school bus driver's statements that his line of sight was obstructed and so he inched forward at the intersection and that he never saw the dump truck. The investigators also said the dump truck was overloaded past its weight limit, which, as ... Continue Reading

From a safety standpoint, school buses are like commercial airlines. Mile-for-mile, they're one of the safest modes of transportation; as the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration noted a decade ago while reviewing whether or not to require seat belts in school buses (more about crashworthiness here), the fatality rate for school buses is 0.2 fatalities for every 100 million vehicle miles traveled as compared to 1.5 fatalities for cars. Like with commercial airliners, though, if a school bus accident does occur, then it's likely to cause a lot of damage, and the accident is likely the result of colossal negligence. Current ... Continue Reading

[UPDATE, July 12, 2012: The independent report by Louis Freeh's law firm has been released. It is damning, to say the least, concluding there was a "total and consistent disregard by the most senior leaders at Penn State for the safety and welfare of Sandusky's child victims." Blame is rightfully heaped upon Paterno, Spanier, Curley, and Schultz.] [UPDATE, June 22, 2012: Jerry Sandusky was convicted on almost all counts. Reuters quoted me talking about the effect of the prosecution and conviction on the civil lawsuits pre-verdict here and post-verdict here. Short version: Penn State, as I had hoped, is signaling their ... Continue Reading

Bormes v. U.S., 2009-1546 (Fed. Cir. November 16, 2010), isn't the type of suit you see every day: On August 9, 2008, Bormes, an attorney, filed a law-suit on behalf of one of his clients in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois using its online document filing system. Bormes paid the filing fee using his credit card, and the transaction was processed through the government’s pay.gov system. The govern-ment then provided Bormes with a confirmation webpage that appeared on Bormes’ computer screen. The confir-mation page contained the expiration date of Bormes’ credit card. That's a problem. ... Continue Reading