PHILADELPHIA - A federal jury has found for lawyers at the firm Blank Rome who were accused of threatening a colleague's career with accusations she had improperly shared information.
On Dec. 12, Philadelphia federal judge Timothy Savage entered judgment for Avco Corporation, Textron, Inc., and lawyers James Smith, Rebecca Ward and Heidi Crikelair. Those defendants were accused by Veronica Turner and her husband Kevin of improprieties stemming from aircraft-crash litigation against Avco.
The jury's verdict came after a four-day trial that began Dec. 9. The defendants produced experts like Lawrence Stengel, a retired federal judge who said the defendants acted properly in the litigation against Avco.
Turner once worked as an attorney representing Avco in air-crash litigation. She claims Blank Rome sought a career-ending injunction against her that claimed she passed information to plaintiff lawyers.
She sued lawyers in Blank Rome’s Providence, R.I. office, the hometown of Avco parent Textron. But her lawsuit is in federal court in Pennsylvania, where a judge has allowed the Florida couple to proceed under the Dragonetti Act, a state law imposing liability for filing malicious or frivolous suits.
The defendants argued, unsuccessfully, Turner wasn’t a Pennsylvania citizen when she sued and the Dragonetti Act isn’t violated when the plaintiff has probable cause backing a lawsuit.
Turner represented Avco from 2005 to 2017, then was hired by a plaintiffs’ firm in 2020 to manage expert witness motions in an Arizona lawsuit against Honeywell, Avco and others over a 2015 plane crash.
Although Avco originally was named as a defendant, Turner said, it had been dismissed by the time she went to work on the case.
In a July ruling, Savage declined to dismiss Turner’s lawsuit, saying more discovery was needed to determine whether the Blank Rome attorneys had enough information to support their filings against Turner in the Arizona case, or were trying to harass her. Avco’s lawyers filed a report from an ethics expert saying Turner had acted improperly, the judge noted.
Turner claimed Blank Rome lawyers violated federal rules of procedure by reaching out to her psychological experts. Such ex parte, or out-of-court communications are strictly controlled under the rules and can be considered witness tampering, Turner argued.