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12/24/2009
In a per curiam order, the Supreme Court has denied allocator in a case in which a man rendered quadriplegic in an accident while driving his work truck claimed economic damages as a result of his employer allegedly destroying parts of the vehicle and hindering his ability to sue the truck manufacturer.
12/23/2009
The state Supreme Court has affirmed a Commonwealth Court decision that declared invalid a Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection rule designed to reduce mercury emissions from coal- and oil-fired power plants.
11/12/2009
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At the request of the one Republican candidate in striking distance of the presumptive Democratic winner of the fourth Superior Court slot on the ballot this year, Pedro A. Cortes, Pennsylvania secretary of the commonwealth, has extended the deadline to determine if there will be a recount in the race until 4:30 p.m. Friday.
11/11/2009
11/11/2009
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Two of the three Superior Court candidates nipping within one-half of 1 percent of presumptive winner Anne E. Lazarus's vote total have decided against seeking a recount. But another candidate is still deciding if he will seek a recount.
11/3/2009
The hard fought race between judges Jack Panella and Joan Orie Melvin for a seat on the state Supreme Court was neck and neck two hours after polls closed Tuesday.
10/2/2009
The Pennsylvania Bar Association’s Judicial Evaluation Commission on Friday released ratings for three late additions to the Superior Court ballot this November.
9/14/2009
Pennsylvania Attorney General Tom Corbett is scheduled to announce his candidacy for governor at an event this evening in Pittsburgh.
9/4/2009
The Pennsylvania Bar Association’s Judicial Evaluation Commission on Friday recommended Superior Court Pennsylvania President Judge Kate Ford Elliot and Commonwealth Court Judge Dan Pellegrini for retention.
9/4/2009
Delaware County Magisterial District Judge David J. Murphy, an 18-year veteran of the court, is the subject of a criminal investigation by the Delaware County District Attorney's Office, the office confirmed.
9/1/2009
Delaware County Magisterial District Judge David J. Murphy, an 18-year veteran of the court, is the subject of a criminal investigation by the Delaware County District Attorney’s Office, the office confirmed.
9/1/2009
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A sixth Luzerne County courthouse official has been named by federal prosecutors in their ongoing corruption probe there.
9/1/2009
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Robert J. Powell, the lawyer and former juvenile detention center owner at the core of Luzerne County’s judicial corruption scandal, has been placed on temporary suspension by the state Supreme Court.
2/17/2009
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The state Supreme Court has terminated the salary and benefits of a former Luzerne County president judge a day after the judge pleaded guilty to accepting $2.6 million in kickbacks from the owner and builder of two juvenile detention facilities.
12/22/2008
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In journalism, inquisitiveness is a quality common among competent reporters. Acting on a hunch can lead to a good story, or even a great one. But sometimes, by asking questions when something doesn't seem right, you shoot yourself in the foot.
10/10/2008
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In Monday’s
6/11/2008
As laid back as his attire, incoming Pennsylvania Bar Association President C. Dale McClain’s address to the group’s House of Delegates last Friday merely touched upon his agenda for the year, focusing instead on the importance of individual members’ participation and his grandchildren.
5/16/2008
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In the wake of his impassioned soliloquy on victims’ rights during an April 15 argument in a pair of death penalty cases, Justice Seamus P. McCaffery seemed subdued during this week’s arguments in Harrisburg.
3/6/2008
That's what they're calling our state now, in the wake of New York Sen. Hillary Clinton's comeback victories in Ohio and Texas , which prevented Illinois Sen. Barack Obama's drive to ensure the Democratic presidential nomination.
3/6/2008
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From ohms to oyez, oyez, oyez, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s new court crier followed an unexpected path from college to his position riding the circuit with the justices of the commonwealth’s highest court.
3/5/2008
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An attorney for death row inmate Richard Scott Baumhammers said Wednesday his client should have been allowed to play for jurors the entire recording of a telephone conversation in which his parents acknowledged his racism played a role in his April 2000 killing spree.
3/4/2008
A century old decision establishing the governor’s authority to issue line item vetoes, was the focus of arguments Tuesday before the state Supreme Court over Gov. Edward G. Rendell’s veto of language rather than appropriations in the legislature’s 2005 budget bill.
3/3/2008
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The state Supreme Court began the first of its 2008 argument sessions Monday in Pittsburgh with a nod to its two newest justices and an acknowledgment that the court’s longest serving member, Ronald D. Castille, will now serve as chief justice.
2/29/2008
In addition to the arguments previewed in the March 3 Pennsylvania Law Weekly, the high court is scheduled also to take up the following cases.
1/25/2008
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Former Superior Court Judge Michael T. Joyce has waived a potential conflict of interest on the part of his defense lawyer in his federal prosecution for alleged insurance fraud.
1/4/2008
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It’s early, but it is high political season not only in places like Iowa and New Hampshire, but all over Pennsylvania.
1/3/2008
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Conventional wisdom holds that the struggles for both major-party presidential nominations will have been decided long before Pennsylvania votes, on April 22.
And indeed, the Pennsylvania Primary has not been a decisive test since 1976, when Jimmy Carter made the Keystone State his first big-state win in the northeast, and President Gerald R. Ford held off the challenge of Ronald Reagan.
11/7/2007
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The pay-raise fiasco is officially played out. With Justice Thomas G. Saylor and six appellate court colleagues safely retained for fresh 10-year terms, it seems that the influence of populist critics of the judiciary has waned in the two years since former Justice Russell M. Nigro was defeated.
8/17/2007
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As
7/10/2007
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I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby would have his work cut out for him if he ever tried to return to his roots as a Philadelphia corporate lawyer, ethics experts say.
5/21/2007
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If you needed Reason No. 96,227 why judicial elections make so little sense, read the below entry from Sam Stretton’s Ethics Forum, which will appear in the May 28
5/15/2007
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That is your command today. It doesn’t matter if you have a trial, Supreme Court oral argument or anything else. Even if you owe a paramount duty to your client, you can find 15 minutes early this morning or after work to walk into a voting booth and pick the men and women who will sit in judgment of your clients, present and future.
5/3/2007
Tomorrow, May 4, is the deadline for appellate court candidates to submit campaign finance statements to the Department of State.
5/1/2007
May 1 is Law Day, traditionally a time for the judiciary to engage the general citizenry.
2/1/2007
For state Sen. Jeffrey E. Piccola, R-Dauphin, January is the cruelest month.
1/23/2007
Just back from a week-long vacation with three kids, and boy, do I need a vacation. I need one like the one the state Supreme Court is currently taking. In my absence, only one per curiam opinion came down from the justices. It was only one sentence, plus a footnote, but, as they say, brevity is the soul of wit. Sometimes brevity can be the soul of wisdom, too.
1/9/2007
Free Article
When I was in Washington as a law student 20 years ago, I went to see the U.S. Supreme Court in action. They were hearing a fairly unexciting case about the constitutionality of an attorney discipline provision. But what is still most memorable to me was a little bit frightening.
1/4/2007
No one really knows the full impact of the bizarre sequence of events that culminated in the elevation of Philadelphia Republican Denny O’Brien to Speaker of the House.
12/18/2006
Judge Bonnie Brigance Leadbetter will begin a five-year term as president judge of the Commonwealth Court next month stepping into a role outgoing President Judge James Gardner Colins has filled for 10 years.
9/22/2006
In this week’s Pennsylvania Law Weekly, I wrote a 2,000-word “Editor’s Desk” piece examining the state Supreme Court’s decision in Stilp v. Commonwealth – the “pay raise” decision. In the piece, I explain my problem with the high court’s approach to the two statutes at issue. But there is still much more to say.
7/25/2006
One of the pleasures of being the editor-in-chief for a couple of newspapers is getting out and meeting the people we cover and who read us. Because after all, newspapers are a part of the their communities and are meant to serve the people in them.
5/1/2006
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The state Supreme Court today has released a "State of the Judiciary" report, the first to be authored by a chief justice of Pennsylvania in two decades.
4/5/2006
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You know you're dealing with something really unpleasant when you have oral arguments for more than two hours and one of the most repeated words is "quagmire."
1/11/2006
Like many evolutionary mistakes, intelligent design may be on the road to extinction, put there Dec. 20 by U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III.
When Jones ruled that the Dover Area School District's intelligent design policy violates the First Amendment and barred the district from mentioning intelligent design in biology classes or "from requiring teachers to denigrate or disparage the scientific theory of evolution," he wasn't just applying a pinprick to the trial balloon intelligent design supporters had chosen to float in this case.
11/30/2005
The proposal to impose a sales tax on professional services creates a conundrum for Gov. Rendell, pitting short-term political gain against bad economic sense.
11/14/2005
Free Article
Nominating Justice Nigro to fill the vacancy created by his own rejection at the polls would be unwise.
11/9/2005
Back in the 1960s, the poet Gil Scott Heron said "the revolution will not be televised." In Pennsylvania, however, the revolution will be on talk radio. Talk radio, with an incessant and single-minded focus on the July pay raise vote, was the engine for Tuesday's unprecedented ouster of a state Supreme Court justice.
9/1/2005
A call has recently come down from the Commonwealth Court’s ivory tower that lawyers in Pennsylvania rely on
8/26/2005
The judicial pay raise has drawn fire from some surprising quarters, but Chief Justice Cappy was right to seek this measure to reward difficult work and perhaps increase the interest of good candidates to serve.
7/1/2005
Justice O'Connor's departure left a legacy in Pennsylvania legal history -- and an example of judicial consensus-building
6/14/2005
In his first column for
5/11/2005
When I read the state Supreme Court's new internal operating procedures governing the organization of opinions, I wanted to stand up and applaud. When there are complex subissues that may generate disagreement among the justices, they are to be separated into sections, a la the U.S. Supreme Court.
4/11/2005
When I first heard that Leslie Ann Miller was leaving her post as general counsel to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, I must confess that I found it incomprehensible.
4/8/2005
Two weeks after a general election delivered a state House seat from the Republicans to the Democrats, the Supreme Court issued an opinion giving the legislative leadership greater latitude to call special elections.
4/1/2005
Well, well, well. It was a quiet first quarter at the state Supreme Court. At least it was until Tuesday, when the justices began to release opinions with the fury of a college student facing deadlines for a dozen term papers.
1/24/2005
Editor's Desk
A recent trio of cases from Centre County amply illustrates that trial judges are left with plenty of discretion when the General Assembly leaves key words undefined in criminal statutes.
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