Lawyers being sued for their involvement with the contempt proceedings against medical malpractice attorney Nancy Raynor are fighting back against her lawsuit, with some arguing state law does not recognize the claims and others seeking to have her case moved from the court's standard program to one reserved for business disputes.

In the latest filing, defendant Joseph Messa and his firm, Messa & Associates, which are defendants in Raynor v. D'Annunzio, argued that the case should be tossed out on preliminary objections because state laws do not allow attorneys to sue one another for “intra-litigation rulings.”

In 2014, Raynor was sanctioned nearly $1 million for allowing a defense expert to make a prohibited reference to smoking in a lung-cancer-related medical malpractice case that resulted in a mistrial. The Pennsylvania Superior Court reversed those sanctions last year, but also decided to uphold a separate $45,000 sanction against Raynor stemming from conduct that occurred in the same underlying lung cancer case.