Lawyer Richard Sprague takes unusual tack in defamation trial
Three weeks ago, Philadelphia lawyer Richard Sprague took what legal experts called an unusual and possibly risky move: asking the state Supreme Court to take away an appeal pending before a three-judge Superior Court panel for taking too long to rule.
Three weeks ago, Philadelphia lawyer Richard Sprague took what legal experts called an unusual and possibly risky move: asking the state Supreme Court to take away an appeal pending before a three-judge Superior Court panel for taking too long to rule.
Although cause-and-effect are impossible to prove, on March 11 the Superior Court panel issued its opinion in Sprague's pretrial appeal in a 2005 defamation lawsuit by two former Lackawanna County commissioners against the Scranton Times-Tribune newspaper.
Now, Sprague and partner Thomas E. Groshens have effectively "doubled-down" on their original motion.
Although the Superior Court panel has now decided, for the newspapers, the commissioners' appeal, Sprague said in a filing Tuesday that the Supreme Court should still take control of the case and order the Board of Judicial Conduct to decide whether the panel's delay in deciding was a "neglect of judicial duties."
Sprague's motion argues that the Superior Court panel - President Judge Susan Peikes Gantman and Judges Mary Jane Bowes and Judith F. Olson - has kept control of the case and has yet to decide another pretrial appeal filed by the Scranton newspaper.
"The panel's resolution of the commissioners' appeal without deciding the newspaper's appeal only compounds the prejudice and harm to the Commissioners," reads Sprague's motion. "The commissioners now face an April 10, 2014 deadline for [appealing] the panel's decision without knowing when or how the panel will decide the newspaper's appeal."
The state's judicial conduct code prohibits judges from commenting on pending litigation.
On March 10, according to court records, the three judges formally filed a response of "no answer" to Sprague. The next day they decided the appeal.
Lawyers for the Scranton newspaper have acknowledged that both appeals have been pending for a long time before the Superior Court panel.
The lawsuit, filed by Sprague for Commissioners Randall A. Castellani and Joseph J. Corcoran, has yet to come to trial and has already been through several pretrial appeals to the Superior and Supreme Courts.
In asking the high court to intervene, Sprague's original motion noted that it had been more than a year since the Superior Court panel heard oral argument in the appeal and almost three years after the Supreme ordered the Superior Court to take up the appellate issues.
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