No Fee For Kids Program Introduced

Posted on August 20, 2011 by Stuart A. Carpey

Whether an attorney should charge a legal fee to a child when that child’s car accident case is settled without having to file a lawsuit is a decision I've decided to confront head on.

When a case involving a child is settled with the insurance company pre suit, the settlement and the lawyer’s fee must be approved by a judge in the county where the accident took place. Too many times I’ve been in court and have seen lawyers attempt to charge fee in cases involving a child, where the child was in the same accident as his or her parent, and the fee, as far as I was concerned, was unjustified. I’ve decided to do something about that by starting the “No Fee for Kids” program.

Here’s how the “No Fee for Kids” program works.

  • It must be a case where the child was involved in the same car accident as one or both of his or her parents.
  • The program applies to car accident cases that settle without having to file a lawsuit.
  • It applies for any child who is 12 or under at the time of the accident.
  • It has to be in a county where I regularly practice.
  • It must be a case that is not referred to me by another attorney.

Further information about the program can be found here, and I detail it more in this video:

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Bucks County Teacher Suspended Because Of Blog Posts Makes The Dangers of Posting Information Online Apparent

Posted on August 15, 2011 by Stuart A. Carpey

            Central Bucks High School East teacher Natalie Munroe was suspended in February 2011 after blogging about her students. The blog posts that landed her in hot water included comments such as “I hate your kid,” “frightfully dim” (references to students) and “don’t you know how to raise kids?”

            While what Mrs. Munroe posted may be viewed by some as disrespectful or even cruel, she did have a First Amendment right to say what she felt. The school district has reinstated her to teach at Central Bucks East for the upcoming year.

            However, this all goes to the much larger issue of privacy on the Internet. The simple fact is that everything you post on the Internet is public information. All your social media accounts including Facebook, Twitter and Google+ can be found and used against you in litigation. It appears that Mrs. Munroe believed that she could blog to a limited audience where the rest of the world would never find her. That was not the case, and was a fact she had to learn the hard way by getting suspended from her job for half a year.

            It’s also a fact that many people in ongoing litigation are learning the hard way. Tweets, pictures and comments on social media sites and blogs are regularly used by insurance companies to defend insured’s in personal injury and medical malpractice cases. Once insurance companies and defense attorneys gain access to information you have posted online, they can use it to cast you in the most negative light possible.

            That is not to say that if you are a party to a lawsuit you cannot post information online. It is, however, a reminder that you should think before you post anything. 

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Former Luzerne County Judge Mark A. Ciavarella, Jr. Sentenced To 28 Years

Posted on August 12, 2011 by Stuart A. Carpey

The Philadelphia Inquirer article written by Crag R. McCoy today sums up the current chapter of the Luzerne County corruption story.

As his moment of sentencing drew near Thursday, former Luzerne County Court Judge Mark A. Ciavarella Jr. was still trying to minimize his crimes. No way, he said, had he sold "kids for cash." The prosecutor would have none of it. "In essence, Mr. Ciavarella's argument is, 'I was not selling kids retail,' " Assistant U.S. Attorney Gordon A.D. Zubrod said. "We agree with that. He was selling them wholesale." Minutes later, U.S. District Judge Edwin M. Kosik slammed Ciavarella, 61, with 28 years in prison. It appeared to be the longest federal prison sentence ever given in a U.S. political corruption case. In the Scranton area, Ciavarella was a key target among many in a sweeping and still-ongoing federal corruption probe. Prosecutors have brought charges against nearly 30 officials, including two other judges, numerous court officials, a former state senator, school board members, and county officials.

As the prosecutor in the case Gordon Zubrod has stated, Ciavarella's actions in his "cash for kids scandal" has left Luzerne County's "criminal justice system... in ruins and will not recover in our lifetimes."

That's an understatement, in my opinion, and in my experience. What Ciavarella and his cronies have done has undermined the trust of Pennsylvania citizens in the entire judicial system, no matter what the county. I raised the issue of the Luzerne County scandal in a voir dire question in a recent Philadelphia case I was trying. Several of he jurors, all from Philadelphia, knew of the "cash for kids" scandal and said it had effected their view of how judges can directly impact their lives or the lives of their families.

As a litigator, I know,  for example, that the legal opinion or findings of a judge in any particular case can have broad reaching affects. But the prospective jurors that I was questioning did not mean what they said in any complimentary way. Ciavarella's shenanagans will be something we all will be dealing with for some time.

 

 

 

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