PHILADELPHIA - A federal judge has refused two disqualification motions in litigation brought by a lawyer who is suing Blank Rome.
Veronica Turner, who claims Blank Rome and its client Avco threatened her career with accusations she had improperly shared information with attorneys suing Avco, sought to have the company's lawyers disqualified for allegedly calling her psychology expert.
And she also didn't want retired federal judge Lawrence Stengel testifying as an expert witness on behalf of defendants, but last week Judge Timothy Savage denied both motions in one-page orders.
Stengel is to testify at trial the defendants acted properly in the underlying aircraft-crash litigation against Avco.
"But he cannot do so," the motion to disqualify him said on Oct. 1. "He is a sitting federal judicial officer who is subject to Canon 2 of the Code of Judicial Conduct for United States judges."
Stengel is still a special master in Virginia federal court, where he oversees the divesture of assets of a company. Judge Savage's order did not elaborate on why he denied the motion.
In her earlier motion to disqualify Avco's counsel, Turner named Blank Rome Partner Brian S. Paszamant as well as his firm, 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.
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, 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 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 argued.
Editor's note: Daniel Fisher contributed to this report.