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Med Mal News

By ljnstaff | Law Journal Newsletters
March 01, 2017

Potentially Chilling PA Attorney Sanction Will Not Be Reinstated

Pennsylvania's Supreme Court has declined to hear a case after an intermediate appeals court reversed a nearly $1 million sanction order against an attorney who allegedly elicited from a witness an improper reference to an off-limits subject. The Dec. 5, 2016, decision in Sutch v. Roxborough Memorial Hospital was undoubtedly good news to Pennsylvania's lawyers, who might rightly have feared that they could be next.

The sanction was originally imposed by Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas Judge Paul P. Panepinto in November 2014 against attorney Nancy Raynor. Judge Panepinto had ordered the attorneys in the medical malpractice case before him to instruct their witnesses not to discuss the smoking history of the plaintiff's decedent. When Raynor allegedly failed to give that instruction to medical expert Dr. John J. Kelly — who then discussed the taboo subject on the stand — the court found Raynor in contempt and ordered her to pay a total of $946,197, of which $770,000 represented the plaintiff's attorney fees.

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