Thursday, September 10, 2009

Professional Announcements

The recent Pennsylvania Defense Institute/Northeast Trial Lawyers Association CLE Seminar at the Mohegan Sun Casinos in Wilkes-Barre was deemed a success. Thanks to all who sponsored or attended the seminar.

I am happy to note that as a reward for my efforts in assisting in putting on the seminar I have been named to the Board of the Pennsylvania Defense Institute as one of two Directors covering the Northern Region of Pennsylvania in this organization.


I also had the below announcement published in the most recent edition of The Voice, an online newsletter of the Defense Research Institute, which is a nationwide organization of defense counsel and insurance professionals:

And The Defense Wins

On June 18, 2009 DRI member, Daniel E. Cummins of the Scranton, Pennsylvania law firm of Foley, Cognetti, Comerford, Cimini & Cummins won a pre-trial dismissal of a case against his client, C&A Industries, in a property damage case. The plaintiff-tenant electronics company alleged that it had sustained thousands of dollars in property damages 14 years ago when its possessions located in a building owned by the defendant-landlord were allegedly damaged as a result of a collapsing of an allegedly negligently maintained roof on the premises.

The case was actually a property damage subrogation claim being pursued by Federal Insurance Company. However, the case remained stagnant over the last 14 years, and the defense finally filed a Motion to Dismiss the case for failure to prosecute it in a timely fashion.

During oral argument, defense counsel emphasized the inappropriate age of the case by noting that the year the underlying event occurred, 1994, was the same year that: Nancy Kerrigan was clubbed by cohorts of Tonya Harding; President Clinton and Boris Yeltsin were in office; George W. Bush was elected governor in Texas; and O.J. Simpson allegedly murdered two people. That's how old this case was.

After the defense argued that the docket sheet on the case and the passage of an inordinate amount of time established that the plaintiff had failed to move the case with reasonable promptitude, with no compelling reason for the delay and to the irreparable prejudice of the defendant in the form of missing witnesses and faded memories, the trial court granted the Motion to Dismiss filed by the defense.

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