Ben Present

November 06, 2012 | The Legal Intelligencer

An Allegheny County judge has granted two insurers' bids to free themselves from defending and indemnifying a builder who's been sued over faulty workmanship by a property owner and retail chain.

By Ben Present

6 minute read

November 13, 2012 | The Legal Intelligencer

The Commonwealth Court has ruled that a man's history of tardiness and missing work were enough to show willful misconduct and deny the man unemployment benefits despite the fact that his final absence — the one that got him fired — was found to have been justified.

By Ben Present

6 minute read

February 07, 2012 | The Legal Intelligencer

A Pennsylvania man's second-degree murder conviction may stand, even though the same jury that found him guilty of murder acquitted him of robbery, the predicate offense in his case, the state Supreme Court has ruled.

By Ben Present

5 minute read

March 20, 2012 | The Legal Intelligencer

The state Supreme Court has come back evenly divided on whether language in the Pennsylvania Workers' Compensation Act requires a workers' compensation judge to deprive an injured worker of medical benefits on top of wage loss benefits when that worker fails to attend a required physical examination after claiming workers' compensation.

By Ben Present

6 minute read

December 13, 2011 | The Legal Intelligencer

A recent ruling from the Commonwealth Court overturning a Monroe County judge's decision, which allowed the state to seize $15,000 hidden in a rental car, makes one thing clear: Just because something might smell like drug activity, doesn't make it so.

By Ben Present

5 minute read

October 23, 2012 | The Legal Intelligencer

In a recent Commonwealth Court decision, a divided en banc panel has allowed General Motors to unilaterally suspend an injured worker's benefits without the required paperwork because the man had taken a voluntary retirement package.

By Ben Present

7 minute read

April 02, 2013 | The Legal Intelligencer

After being laid off from her full-time job as a salesperson, a woman who added some hours to the real estate work she had already been doing on the side is eligible for unemployment benefits, the Commonwealth Court has ruled.

By Ben Present

4 minute read

July 03, 2012 | The Legal Intelligencer

As the attention in Pennsylvania to the incidence of child abuse reached a crescendo with dual verdicts in the Jerry Sandusky trial and the Philadelphia priest sex-abuse trial last month, a number of public-policy proposals are in the works or waiting in the wings in Harrisburg.

By Amaris Elliott-Engel and Ben Present

10 minute read

November 22, 2011 | The Legal Intelligencer

An act of ethnic intimidation cannot be negated simply because a defendant acted with other motivating factors during the course of an attack, the state Supreme Court ruled.

By Ben Present

5 minute read

September 18, 2012 | The Legal Intelligencer

It's a question that comes up often after a new law is challenged under the single-subject rule of the Pennsylvania Constitution: Why combine seemingly unrelated imperatives into one piece of legislation?

By Ben Present

5 minute read