Judge won't budge on $1M sanction against lawyer; discounts legal technician's testimony
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A Philadelphia judge on Monday rejected new evidence and kept in place a nearly $1 million sanction against a lawyer for allegedly eliciting banned testimony in a medical malpractice trial.
Common Pleas Judge Paul Panepinto discounted testimony supporting med-mal defense lawyer Nancy Raynor, who claimed she had told her expert witness not to mention a lung cancer victim’s history of smoking, report the Legal Intelligencer and the Philadelphia Inquirer. The victim’s daughter had claimed in the malpractice suit that X-rays had detected a nodule on her mother’s lung but doctors failed to inform her.
The Pennsylvania Superior Court had ordered Panepinto to hold a hearing to consider new testimony supporting Raynor. During that March hearing, a trial technician testified he overheard Raynor tell the expert that he could not mention smoking by the lung-cancer victim.
According to the Intelligencer account, Panepinto said the legal technician’s testimony was not new evidence and did not warrant a reassessment of the fine he imposed on Raynor. The Inquirer story says Panepinto said he had “serious concerns” about the legal technician’s memory, as well as his “overall capacity for telling the truth.”
Raynor’s lawyer, Jeff McCarron, told the Inquirer that Panepinto’s words were “uncalled for,” and the trial technician’s testimony was consistent with other evidence.
