Joseph Marano

December 21, 2017 | The Legal Intelligencer

With the New Year will come a significant change to how documents are submitted and retrieved in the Pennsylvania courts. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has adopted a new public access policy that establishes uniform standards for all trial and appellate courts in Pennsylvania.

By Joseph Marano

6 minute read

January 17, 2017 | The Legal Intelligencer

Mediating a medical malpractice case brings with it many challenges that are not present when mediating other types of cases. From the outset you must determine whether or not your case can be mediated at all. This presents a challenge unique to medical malpractice cases. This is because if any of your defendants are physicians, there will likely be a consent clause in the doctor's insurance policy. Therefore, the doctor will need to execute a consent to settle with their insurance company before any real settlement discussions can occur. This is often a difficult hurdle to overcome before undertaking mediation and one of the main reasons medical malpractice cases go to trial at a higher rate than any other types of matters. Doctors must report any settlement to the National Practitioner Data Bank, which is something doctors often wish to avoid. Should the doctor not agree to consent, mediation with that defendant cannot occur, so it must be evaluated whether it is worthwhile to mediate with any of the remaining parties and potentially carve that doctor out via joint tortfeasor release, or if you are in an all-or-nothing scenario. Should the parties desire to mediate and the defendant doctors agree to consent to settle the litigation, the next step is to pick an appropriate mediator.

By Joseph Marano

15 minute read

January 27, 2015 | The Legal Intelligencer

A few years back, I was sitting in my office with two other attorneys from my firm. The attorneys had recently used a Smart Board and Trial Director during a large environmental case and were unhappy with the clumsiness, ineffectiveness and high cost of the these trial tools. For their next trial, we discussed the possibility of using an iPad.

By Joseph Marano

7 minute read

January 26, 2015 | The Legal Intelligencer

A few years back, I was sitting in my office with two other attorneys from my firm. The attorneys had recently used a Smart Board and Trial Director during a large environmental case and were unhappy with the clumsiness, ineffectiveness and high cost of the these trial tools. For their next trial, we discussed the possibility of using an iPad.

By Joseph Marano

7 minute read