Top state court won't review overturned $1M sanction against med-mal lawyer
The Supreme Court Chamber in the Pennsylvania State Capitol building. Nagel Photography / Shutterstock.com
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court won’t consider a case seeking to reinstate a nearly $1 million sanction against a lawyer accused of eliciting banned testimony at a medical malpractice trial.
The court denied the appeal Monday, leaving in place an appellate decision that overturned the sanction against lawyer Nancy Raynor, the Legal Intelligencer (sub. req.) reports.
Raynor was accused of eliciting banned testimony about a deceased patient’s history of smoking when she asked her medical expert at the 2012 trial whether the woman had any risk factors for heart disease. Raynor represented the defense in the suit against emergency room doctors who failed to tell the patient that X-rays had detected a nodule on her lung.
The appellate-level Pennsylvania Superior Court ruled in June that there was no proof that Raynor intentionally sought testimony about smoking. Nor was there “any evidence of collusion, intrigue, or wrongful purpose on the part of Ms. Raynor,” the superior court said.
Raynor was also ordered to pay $45,000 in fees and costs for pressuring a witness in the same trial. The Pennsylvania Superior Court upheld that sanction in a November opinion.
