Practices

Litigation

Governmental Litigation & Public Affairs

Several of our lawyers have served or now serve as public officials. Among our litigation shareholders are two former Philadelphia City Solicitors, a former General Counsel of the School District of Philadelphia, a member of Philadelphia’s School Reform Commission, and a member of the Zoning Board of Haddonfield, New Jersey. We are often called upon to render advice to public institutions and government entities and, when necessary, to represent them in high-profile litigation projects. We find in such cases that our clients highly value our insights into the best methods of managing the press and public opinion.  

Examples of our work in this area include the following: 

  • We successfully represented the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania’s Department of State in several high-profile lawsuits related to the use of electronic voting machines. In one case, our attorneys obtained a victory in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court; in another, we obtained a favorable result following a preliminary injunction hearing in federal court; 
  • We represented the Commonwealth’s Department of Education in an action that sought to place a school district into equity receivership on account of profound financial mismanagement and asked for, among other things, the unprecedented relief of the appointment of a receiver to operate and manage the district. The Commonwealth Court appointed Secretary of Education Gerald Zahorchak in his capacity as Receiver Pendente Lite; 
  • We drafted a brief, on very short notice, that defeated a motion for a preliminary injunction in Commonwealth Court that would have had the effect of substantially disrupting Pennsylvania’s 2009 budget negotiations. In a hearing that took place a little less than 48 hours after the motion for preliminary injunction was filed, the Court ruled that it could not enjoin the Executive Branch from complying with legislation that had not yet been enacted; 
  • We represented Lower Merion Township in defeating a challenge by local business and property owners to the Township’s attempts to redevelop an area of the Ardmore business district surrounding the Ardmore train station; 
  • We represented technology and communications companies on E911 (the telephone network feature that automatically associates the physical address of a 9-1-1 caller with his telephone number) counseling, negotiation, and litigation with municipalities;  
  • We represented the Pennsylvania Insurance Department in its examination of the proposal by Pennsylvania’s two largest health insurers, Highmark and Independence Blue Cross, to consolidate into a new company. Although the proposed merger was eventually called off, we worked with expert economists and financial consultants to provide legal analysis of the antitrust aspects of the governing law, as well as analysis of health care policy and regulatory process issues; 
  • We represented the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission in a case alleging discriminatory and retaliatory termination; 
  • We successfully defended the Pennsylvania Department of Health, the Secretary of Health, and the Deputy Secretary of Quality Assurance in an action filed in the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court by four hospitals in western Pennsylvania that sought to perform angioplasty services despite the lack of on-site heart surgical backup centers. The Court rejected the hospitals’ reliance on specific language in the 2005 General Appropriation Act as an unconstitutional nullity.

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