Casualty

We succeeded in obtaining a per curiam affirmance in the First District Court of Appeal of a final order dismissing the plaintiff’s fire-loss subrogation claim against our client, a tenant in a leased property the plaintiff insured. The First District affirmed the trial court’s finding that the specific fire-loss provisions in the lease shifted the risk of loss to the landlord, the plaintiff’s insured. As a result, our client was a co-insured under the plaintiff’s policy. An insurance company cannot sue its own insured.

Marshall Dennehey’s trial and appellate attorneys were successful in their representation of a national home improvement retail corporation’s tool and truck rental division. Handling the case at both the trial and appellate levels, the defense was successful in convincing the New Jersey appellate court to affirm the trial court’s decision on July 23, 2024. At the trial level, the judge granted our motion for a directed verdict and dismissed the case. The plaintiff had rented a flatbed truck in 2018 to move a cabinet he had just purchased. He alleged that a store employee gave him a set of ramps to use in the truck, but while doing so, they moved and he fell, sustaining serious and permanent injury to his back. The plaintiff alleged he later returned to the store and was told that he had been given the wrong ramps. The panel said that the record included no actual evidence that the ramp did not fit the truck beyond the employee’s saying it was the wrong ramp, or that the ramp slipped because it was incompatible with the truck. Even in his testimony, the panel said the plaintiff did not actually identify any physical cause for the ramp to move. “The dearth of evidence establishing the manner and cause of the slip or slide of the ramp rendered it impossible for the jury to make a reasoned determination as to whether defendant’s purported negligence proximately caused plaintiff’s fall and injuries,” the panel said. The court, therefore, affirmed the case on appeal. 

We secured summary judgment in a premises liability case in Northampton County, Pennsylvania, dismissing all claims against a national sporting goods retailer. The plaintiff claimed he slipped and fell on a slippery substance inside a the store while testing out bicycles. The plaintiff and his wife admitted that after he fell, they did not inspect the floor and quickly left the store. Months later, and after filing suit, the plaintiff and an engineer visited the store and claimed that there was an open can of bicycle grease in the area where the fall had occurred. Based on this evidence alone, the plaintiff theorized, through an expert report, that he must have fallen on bicycle grease negligently left on the floor by the store staff. Summary judgment was sought on the grounds that no witnesses to the fall ever actually identified any substance on the floor, and that the expert’s opinion was based on pure speculation. The court agreed and dismissed all claims against our client.

We won summary judgment for an online car sharing platform that connects vehicle owners (hosts) with travelers and locals (guests) seeking to book those vehicles for a fee in New York. The plaintiff alleged that he sustained serious injuries when he was involved in an automobile accident that collided with a vehicle listed on our client’s website. The Bronx County Supreme Court granted summary judgment in favor of our client, ruling that the defendant demonstrated that it is a peer-to-peer car sharing service; it does not provide rental services; it does not own, maintain or repair any of the vehicles on its platform; it is not responsible for the acts and omissions of the hosts or guests; and there is no agency relationship between defendant and the hosts or guests.

We won a defense verdict in a high-exposure product liability trial, defeating claims that a client’s hair dye caused bladder cancer. The verdict was reached after a two-and-a-half week jury trial in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas. The plaintiffs’ claim was that the hair dye made by global men’s hair dye manufacturer caused the husband’s bladder cancer. Prior to trial there was a significant demand, but the jury wholly rejected the plaintiffs’ negligence and strict liability claims. Background: The plaintiff was a part-time barber in Reading and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, from 1994–2008. On occasion, he used the defendant’s hair dye on his customers and himself. He also worked full-time as a book binder at various printing companies. In August of 2016 he was diagnosed with bladder cancer. He filed suit against the manufacturer, claiming that their hair dye was contaminated with the chemical 4-aminobiphenyl (4-ABP), which is a known carcinogen. Numerous expert witnesses were called by both sides—toxicologists, epidemiologists, organic/anylytical chemists, urologists and occupation physicians. The defense denied that the hair dye product contained 4-ABP because its manufacturing process is conducted in such a manner that it would not create 4-ABP. This was supported via corporate witnesses and multiple experts. After one hour and 13 minutes of deliberations, the jury found that the defendant was not negligent and their product was not defective. Read about this verdict in The Legal Intelligencer (subscription required): Pa. Jury Rejects Claims Linking 'Just For Men' Hair Dye to Cancer."  

We successfully defended a national car-sharing company, resulting in a dismissal of all claims. The case involved a multi-party suit arising out of a commercial auto accident. Through aggressive pleading, we obtained a dismissal by arguing that both federal and state law provisions prohibited any claims against the car-sharing company.

We obtained a jury defense verdict in Cumberland County, New Jersey. We defended a major propane company where it was claimed that they provided negligent service to a stove which allegedly caused a trailer fire. The plaintiffs lost everything in the fire, including their pets. They also sustained serious and permanent burn injuries. Total medical bills were in excess of $1.5 million, and there was a $227,000 Medicare lien. The plaintiffs’ demand was $5 million. In less than two hours, the jury returned a verdict in favor of the defense.

We secured summary judgment in Monroe County, Pennsylvania, where the plaintiff filed suit claiming he contracted a fungal infection from staying at the defendant’s hotel. The plaintiff produced an expert microbiologist’s report, in addition to his treating physician’s records, in support of his claims. Summary judgment was sought on the grounds that the plaintiff’s expert was not competent enough to identify a specific fungus from photographs of the hotel room and the treating physician’s records were equivocal as to the cause of the plaintiff’s infection. Judge Arthur Zulick found the plaintiff’s microbiologist’s opinion speculative, as the microbiologist did not conduct an inspection of the hotel, obtain fungal samples or perform any lab testing. The judge further held that the plaintiff’s diagnoses of a fungal infection was not sufficiently supported by his treating doctor’s diagnoses. As a result, Judge Zulick entered judgment in favor of the defendant.

We obtained summary judgment after oral argument with Judge Anne Swern in Kings County Supreme Court in New York. This case involved a motor vehicle accident where the plaintiff was a backseat passenger in an Uber that rear-ended a vehicle owned and operated by our clients. We established that our clients were stopped for 10-15 seconds at a light when they were rear-ended by the Uber driver, who was precluded and could not submit any testimony in this matter. Further, by establishing that the plaintiff was asleep at the time, she could not offer any evidence of how the accident happened. 

We secured summary judgment in a New York case in which the plaintiff claimed that she slipped and fell on stairs in our client’s building. The plaintiff alleged that she slipped on a wet condition on the stairway landing in an inadequately illuminated stairway. The defendant submitted an affidavit of its expert, which stated that the lighting measurements taken in the stairway complied with code. The defendant also demonstrated that it did not create the condition by submitting an affidavit of the building’s porter, who stated that neither he nor any other porter mopped that morning. The affidavit further established that the defendant did not have notice of the alleged wet condition or defective lighting, as it did not receive any complaints about a hazardous condition on the floor at any time before the accident, and that he inspected the premises approximately two hours prior to the plaintiff’s incident and did not observe any defective condition. In light of this evidence, the plaintiff’s claim that the area was mopped by the defendant was speculative, as she was unable to present any facts sufficient to establish when the stairway was mopped or if the cause of the wet stairway was due to the defendant’s mopping the stairway.

We obtained summary judgment in the Westmoreland County Court of Common Pleas in favor of our clients in a dispute over alleged excess water runoff. Our clients, a married couple, were sued by their neighbors for claims related to water runoff due to the installation of gutters and downspouts on a shed near the property line. We effectively argued for summary judgment on the plaintiffs’ injunction, trespass, nuisance and negligence claims, demonstrating that the plaintiffs lacked the necessary expert testimony to substantiate their case as required under Pennsylvania law. Additionally, the plaintiffs’ negligence claim was barred by the two-year statute of limitations, which had expired at least six years before the suit was filed.

Our motion to dismiss was affirmed on appeal after the Ninth District Court of Appeals found that the plaintiff had sued a non sui juris entity by suing a county department in a personal injury suit. The plaintiff initially filed suit against the department, which was later dismissed without prejudice to allow more time to develop the plaintiff’s medical records. When he refiled his suit, he again named a county department as the defendant. We filed a motion to dismiss, arguing that a county department does not have the capacity to be sued. The plaintiff then filed a motion to amend the complaint and again named the county. In our motion to dismiss the amended complaint, we argued that the plaintiff was outside of the statute of limitations and that the change in defendant could not relate back to the originally filed suit. The plaintiff’s argument, that naming the department was merely a misnomer and that the amended complaint should relate back to the original filing, failed and the trial court dismissed the case. After oral argument, the appellate court affirmed the decision.

We won summary judgment in a challenging dram shop liability case against a large restaurant chain where the demand was $1 million. The plaintiff alleged our client was responsible for overserving the co-defendant driver prior to the subject motor vehicle accident. The court agreed with our arguments that the plaintiff failed to establish a violation of the The New Jersey Dram Shop Act. The plaintiff failed to present an expert report until opposing our motion for summary judgment. The expert report, which was submitted as an exhibit to the plaintiff’s opposition brief, did not extrapolate the defendant’s BAC at the time he left the defendant’s establishment. There was also no eyewitness testimony on the issue. The court rejected the plaintiff’s arguments that there was sufficient circumstantial evidence to support a jury’s conclusion that the co-defendant driver was visibly intoxicated at the time of service based on police observations at the scene of the accident and a (.17) BAC reading, which was administered approximately one hour and 30 minutes after leaving the restaurant. Distinguishing between prior case law and the subject circumstances, summary judgment was awarded based on the lack of either direct testimony or expert opinion as to the co-defendant’s state of intoxication at the time of service. 

We successfully resolved a wrongful death case involving a 14-year-old boy who fell from an Orlando attraction, navigating a concurrent criminal investigation, state review, and intense media scrutiny on behalf of the ride's owner/operator.

We obtained summary judgment on behalf of a university in a slip and fall case. The plaintiff, a university student, slipped and fell during an active winter storm as she was walking from one campus building to another. Discovery showed that the plaintiff received an emergency alert from the university warning of potentially icy conditions prior to exiting the building and that freezing rain was still falling as the plaintiff was walking. We argued, and the court agreed, that the university owed no duty to the plaintiff to protect against general slippery conditions or to pretreat sidewalks prior to, during or immediately after the storm.

We obtained a defense verdict following a compulsory arbitration in a motor vehicle pileup. The plaintiff alleged that while she was stopped in traffic, the co-defendant’s vehicle rear ended her, pushing her into the vehicle in front of her. To the contrary, the co-defendant contended that our client caused the entire accident by being the first to rear-end his vehicle, pushing him into the plaintiff’s vehicle just once. Despite the conflicting testimony, we convinced the arbitration panel that, although our client was involved in the accident, the plaintiff testified the first strike she felt from the co-defendant’s vehicle was harder, and that the impact caused by her client’s vehicle was minimal due to the lack of damage to her vehicle. The arbitration panel assigned no liability to our client.

We secured summary judgment in a general liability case involving a dog bite. The plaintiff alleged a laceration to the face from a dog bite. The dog was owned by a co-defendant, not by our client, the landlord of the property where the bite occurred. There were no issues of material fact or proof to support a theory of liability under strict or ordinary negligence, and no behavioral signs of aggression were observed by the plaintiff or the property owner’s son who hosted the party where the plaintiff was bitten. We argued that the elements under both theories could not be met, and the judge agreed, granting summary judgment.

We successfully obtained an order to move a sexual assault case to Chester County, Pennsylvania. At first, the venue appeared prima fascia good for Philadelphia until our attorneys more closely investigated and found the one defendant holding the case in the city was never served and could not be found. 

We secured summary judgment for our client, a tow truck company, in three consolidated cases venued in Essex County Superior Court arising out of a fatal motor vehicle accident caused by an illegal left-hand turn by a tow truck driver. The plaintiffs alleged that our client was liable under a theory of respondeat superior as the tow truck driver’s employer. The plaintiffs further alleged that our client negligently hired, trained, supervised and entrusted the vehicle to the driver. However, we established that our client sold the subject tow truck to a co-defendant tow truck company two weeks before the accident. The court found that the co-defendant’s deposition testimony did not suffice to create a genuine issue of material fact and granted our motion, dismissing all claims against our client.

We secured a jury defense verdict in a general liability lawsuit brought against our client, a Pennsylvania moving equipment rental company. The plaintiffs were in their car at a McDonald's drive-thru in Delaware when their vehicle was struck by an unattached trailer that had blown from an adjacent parking lot during a storm. The trailer was blown from the parking lot of the adjacent gas station which rented trailers to the public as part of a dealership agreement with a Delaware moving equipment rental company that had the same parent corporation as the client. After the accident, the gas station employee provided the plaintiff with an old business card for an employee of the Delaware equipment rental company, but which identified the employee as an agent of the Pennsylvania moving equipment company. The plaintiffs contended that the business card established agency, and we argued that an old business card was not enough to establish agency and that the testimony of the parties directly contradicted the wording on the business card. The plaintiffs claimed to have suffered neck and back injuries, and one contended she would have future medical expenses in excess of $100,000. The first question on the verdict slip asked the jury to state whether the Delaware company employee was also an employee and/or agent of the Pennsylvania moving truck rental company at the time of the accident and the jury answered "No." That eliminated the need for the jury to answer any further questions, and a defense verdict was rendered.

The plaintiff slipped in the lobby of a commercial building and claimed a serious and ongoing injury to her right shoulder. She alleged she fell due to a wet floor caused by the facilities management’s cleaning process and the lack of sufficient visible wet floor caution signs. The plaintiff underwent two surgeries, claimed ongoing pain and suffering, and sought $500,000 prior to trial.  We represented the building ownership and the facilities management company. Problematic for the defense was the lack of a surveillance video of the incident, photographs of the lobby contemporaneous to the incident, or an incident report. Despite this, we persuaded the jury to find for the defense by establishing a consistent and credible history of habitual practice in the placement of wet floor signs in highly visible areas across the lobby.  We also won the credibility battle through our well-prepared witnesses. Although faced with a sympathetic plaintiff with a substantiated history of medical treatment, our attorneys succeeded by presenting the case using “old school” personal injury defense tactics that were necessary due to the lack of video, photographs, and documentation. 

We obtained a defense verdict following a three-day jury trial in a slip-and-fall injury case in the Court of Common Pleas of Allegheny County. The plaintiff slipped in the allegedly wet lobby of a commercial building and claimed a serious and ongoing injury to her right shoulder. Problematic for our case was the lack of a surveillance video of the incident, photographs of the lobby contemporaneous to the incident, or an incident report. Despite this, we persuaded the jury to find for the defense by establishing a consistent and credible history of habitual practice in the placement of wet floor signs across the lobby in highly visible areas. 

We successfully transferred two consolidated cases involving alleged falls by construction workers from Philadelphia to Cumberland County. Our clients were located in Lancaster County, and the only codefendant was located in Philadelphia County. We filed preliminary objections as to venue, arguing that the codefendant was a “phantom” defendant named to obtain venue in Philadelphia County. The court was convinced by our arguments. This ruling cuts against the current trend of giving broad deference to plaintiffs on venue issues.

We successfully defended an insurance carrier in a New Jersey no-fault arbitration matter. The claimant, a pain management provider, filed an arbitration demand in the amount of $125,218 in connection with a baseline urine toxicology screen and subsequent presumptive and confirmatory testing performed on a monthly basis to monitor a patient’s medication regimen. We successfully argued that the extensive testing was being performed without regard to the needs of the patient. After arguments were heard, the arbitrator issued an award in favor of our client, finding that the excessive testing was not medically necessary, saving our client more than $100,000.

We secured a summary judgment in a case in which the plaintiff slipped and fell on our client’s premises. An employee had clocked out and was in the process of gathering his personal belongings from the front-end counter when he allegedly created a dangerous condition by dropping his “personal jug” of iced tea on the floor, which the plaintiff slipped on. We argued that the retailer was not vicariously liable for the acts of the employee, who was “off the clock” at the time. The court held that “off duty employment” is a question of law since there was no genuine dispute of material facts as to whether the employee was “acting within the scope of his employment” at the time the alleged dangerous condition was created. A trial was set for April 2024, and the plaintiff’s last demand was $650,000 before summary judgment was granted.

We were granted a motion for summary judgment in a slip-and-fall case before a court in Queens County, New York. The plaintiff argued that she fell down the stairs located inside employer’s store. As she could not sue her employer, she instead sued the landlord. We successfully argued that our client was an out-of-possession landlord that held no liability to the plaintiff. Further, she successfully argued that our client was not contracted to maintain the premises.

We secured a dismissal with prejudice in a product liability case in Pennsylvania. The plaintiffs, who were involved, but not responsible, for a drunk driving accident, claimed that the beverage manufacturer was liable to them because the product had more alcohol than other alcoholic beverages and was improperly marketed to minors. Our team successfully argued several points, including that Pennsylvania does not recognize such a product liability cause of action because the dangers of drinking alcohol and driving are obvious, and the manufacturer has no duty to warn potential users of such dangers.

We successfully defended and submitted post-hearing arguments and secured dismissal of a New York no-fault arbitration matter. The applicant, a major medical provider, filed an arbitration matter in the amount of $361,601.62, claiming our client owed it for the claimant’s unpaid medical bills following a major motor vehicle accident. The claimant had been involved in the motor vehicle accident and sought payment for medical treatment for a series of treatments rendered while hospitalized, post-accident. Counsel for the medical provider argued that the medical billing was never properly nor timely denied, therefore, payment of the claims was overdue. However, we successfully argued at the arbitration hearing that the applicant’s client failed to provide the requisite statutorily required medical assignment-of-benefits form, assigning the hospital the right to sue on behalf of the injured party. After arguments were heard, the arbitrator ordered post-hearing submissions to be filed by both sides. After researching, drafting and filing a post-hearing submission, the arbitrator ruled in our client’s favor, thereby dismissing the matter based on the applicant’s total failure to submit the requisite form, saving our client hundreds of thousands of dollars.

We obtained a defense verdict in a case involving medical and property damages. While riding a bicycle through a shopping center parking lot, the plaintiff collided with our client, who was driving a vehicle, at an intersection that did not have stop signs. The plaintiff alleged that our client was responsible for his medical damages, as well as property damage to his bike and clothing. At the hearing, we obtained testimony from the plaintiff that his medical bills had been full covered by his health insurance, and that he could not demonstrate that the alleged property damage stemmed from the incident at hand. The judge agreed and granted a defense verdict.

We secured a positive outcome for our client in a construction site-related personal injury case in New Jersey. After a month of trial, we successfully placed the entirety of the plaintiff’s $4.2 million jury verdict against the remaining co-defendant. We also succeeded in placing all of our client’s costs and attorney’s fees on the co-defendant. In total, the judgment against the co-defendant was in excess of $7 million.