Shareholders Matthew Hamermesh, Thomas Brown and paralegal Maria Hunter secured an appellate victory for Offit Kurman, with the Pennsylvania Superior Court affirming the dismissal of a legal malpractice lawsuit that had been litigated against the Am Law 200 firm for over a decade.
The Hangley Aronchick team successfully defended Offit Kurman and its attorneys against claims stemming from a failed real estate development in Sussex County, Delaware. The project’s developer originally sought to recover $40 million from its former attorneys, which the company claimed to have lost due to an ill-fated bankruptcy petition in 2012.
On Oct. 10, 2024, Judge James C. Crumlish III of the Court of Common Pleas granted summary judgment for Offit Kurman, extinguishing all remaining claims against the firm. In a 32-page opinion, Judge Crumlish found it “troubling… that Plaintiffs seek to blame the outcome of their decision to file for bankruptcy” on the firm. He found no evidence to support the plaintiffs’ “self-serving and unsubstantiated” allegations that any advice from Offit Kurman’s attorneys had caused their losses in the underlying bankruptcy proceedings.
The plaintiffs appealed the decision to the Pennsylvania Superior Court. On Jan. 27, 2026, a three-judge panel upheld Judge Crumlish’s ruling in its entirety, finding that the plaintiffs’ claims of “purported negligence are so speculative and uncertain that recovery is precluded as a matter of law.”
Read more in Law360 and The Legal Intelligencer.
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