Suspended Pa. Judge Now at Issue in $3.4M Legal Malpractice Judgment
Accusations that two now-suspended Pennsylvania judges accepted $2.6 million in kickbacks in exchange for incarcerating juveniles at specific detention facilities have spilled over into another multimillion-dollar case.
A law firm seeking to overturn a $3.4 million legal malpractice award says in a motion for a new trial yesterday that it should be allowed to introduce evidence of the judges’ alleged criminal conduct and plea agreements in the federal kickbacks case, reports the Wilkes-Barre Times Leader.
Because one of the two judges, former Luzerne County President Judge Mark Ciavarella Jr., presided over the legal malpractice case—and a lawyer representing the malpractice plaintiff was then an owner of a juvenile detention facility central to the criminal case—information about the federal criminal case is relevant to show bias on the judge’s part in the legal malpractice case, contends Laputka Bayless Ecker & Cohn in the motion.
The malpractice case concerned the Hazleton, Pa.-based Laputka firm’s handling of a series of lawsuits concerning real estate transactions.
More details about the two judges’ plea agreements in the federal criminal case are provided in a previous ABAJournal.com post.
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