PHILADELPHIA - A lawyer suing Avco Corp. and the Blank Rome law firm for allegedly defaming her now wants Avco’s lawyers disqualified for improperly calling her psychology expert. The ex parte contacts may have scared off the expert, complained Veronica Turner in a filing seeking sanctions against the defense lawyers.
Turner named Blank Rome Partner Brian S. Paszamant as well as his firm in the motion for sanctions, saying he admitted a defense lawyer had left a voicemail on the line of Richard S. Goldberg, who had examined the plaintiff in July. Avco’s lawyers followed up with a subpoena seeking to depose the psychologist on Sept. 30, Turner said
“Despite several communications seeking to schedule his deposition, Dr. Goldberg has now stopped responding to Plaintiffs’ counsel,” Turner complained.
Paszamant didn’t immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.
Turner once worked as an attorney representing Avco in air-crash litigation. She and her husband Kevin sued Avco and lawyers at Blank Rome, claiming they threatened her career with accusations she had improperly shared information with plaintiff attorneys and sought a career-ending injunction against her.
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, U.S. District Judge Timothy E. 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.
“But, at this stage, we look only to what Turner alleges, not what facts the defendants assert in moving to dismiss,” the judge wrote.
Turner and her husband are seeking damages under the Dragonetti Act and for loss of consortium. They say Paszamant and other lawyers in Blank Rome’s Philadelphia office 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 argues.
“The improper contacts with Dr. Goldberg require severe sanctions, particularly if (as it appears at the time of this writing) they have caused Dr. Goldberg to cease his involvement in this matter and left Plaintiff without a psychiatric expert,” Turner said. She sought to have the Blank Rome lawyers and the firm itself disqualified as well as a court ruling that the contents of Goldberg’s report be accepted as undisputed facts. In the alternative, Turner said, she should be allowed to hire a new expert at Avco’s expense, whose findings also would be undisputed.
Psychological evidence is a component juries consider when calculating damages. Avco didn’t seek to have Turner examined by its own expert, the plaintiff said.