Corbett's reputation as Attorney General was (1)not too bright and (2)lazy. Keep in mind Corbett lacked the grades and LSAT scores to get admitted to ANY Pennsylvania law school. After he finished college, he spent a year spinning his wheels as a substitute high school teacher and finally managed to get admitted to a 4th rate law school in Texas.
The attorneys he favored in the AG's office were similarly low achievers who politically brown-nosed and didn't threaten him. For example, I always thought it unethical and a conflict of interest that one of his "senior" staff attorneys charged with protecting consumer interests was on the state GOP committee. Like she would really go after any business which was a Corbett donor?
And the current AG, Linda Kelly was hand-picked by Corbett. According to a report in the Harrisburg Patriot-News, colleagues of Kelly said a long-established friendship between her and Corbett did not hurt the chances of her becoming the state’s top law enforcement officer. The Patriot-News, citing Pennsylvania Department of State records, reported Kelly contributed more than $10,000 combined to Corbett’s statewide campaigns in 2004, 2008 and 2010. In Corbett's AG office, it wasn't your legal skills and work ethic which were rewarded, it was how much you sucked up to and contributed to Tommy.
SPANIER'S ATTORNEYS ARE A TEAM OF LEGAL SUPER HEROS.
I just researched the four lawyers representing Spanier and they are top drawer and will mop the courtroom floor with the AG's lawyers, and they'll do it without breaking a sweat. The Judge in this case will be extremely differential, which will influence the jury, to Spanier's legal team because of their collective backgrounds as a Third Circuit Appellate Judge, a federal prosecutor for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, agent in charge of strike forces on organized crime, and assistant US Attorneys on very high profile national and international cases.
Be Afraid, One Term Tom! Be Very Afraid! ! !
Timothy Lewis
Before entering private practice, Judge Lewis served on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. He was serving on the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania when President George H. W. Bush elevated him to the Court of Appeals in 1992. At the time of both appointments he was the youngest federal judge in the United States. Before being appointed to the federal bench, Judge Lewis served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania and as an Assistant District Attorney in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania.
Litigation, Appellate and Arbitration
Judge Lewis’ private practice includes federal and state appeals, complex arbitration and mediation matters, commercial litigation, federal and state criminal cases and corporate investigations. In addition, highlights of his work since leaving the bench include the following:
Judge Lewis provided strategic counseling in various high-profile appeals. Some of the most recent of these cases have been in the Courts of Appeal for the Second, Third, Fourth, Eighth, and Tenth Circuits and the United States Supreme Court and involved issues of antitrust law, intellectual property, securities fraud, constitutional law, products liability, bankruptcy law, environmental law and successor liability.
Judge Lewis was one of four former federal appeals judges who took the unprecedented step of filing an amicus brief on behalf of Delma Banks in the United States Supreme Court in 2003, in a case in which the court overturned the death penalty.
During the fall of 2003, Judge Lewis chaired and moderated a series of national town meetings and congressional-style hearings called by Amnesty International on the subject of “Racial Profiling, Pre- and Post-9/11.”
In December 2002, Judge Lewis served as the U.S. representative on an international faculty of judges and mediators during a U.S. AID-sponsored Mediation Roundtable in the Republic of Croatia.
Judge Lewis is a co-chair of the National Committee on the Right to Counsel (with former Vice President Walter Mondale as honorary co-chair), a bipartisan committee established by the National Legal Aid and Defender Association and the Constitution Project to review the indigent defense system throughout the nation and create consensus recommendations for necessary reforms.
Professional Associations
After leaving the bench, Judge Lewis served as a member of the Advisory Committee for the Study of Rules of Practice and Internal Operating Procedures for the United States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania.
In June 2000, Judge Lewis was appointed to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s Committee on Racial and Gender Bias in the Justice System.
Elizabeth Ainslie
Named one of "America's Top 50 Women Litigators" by The National Law Journal, Elizabeth Ainslie has tried more than 75 cases to verdict and conducted innumerable evidentiary hearings, sentencings, oral arguments and arbitrations.
From 1979 to 1984, Ms. Ainslie was a federal prosecutor for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, serving as the chief of the Fraud Section during 1983 to 1984.
Civil RICO and Other Significant Litigation
Ms. Ainslie's significant representative civil litigation matters are as follows:
Successful defense of The New York Times in a 2004 defamation trial.
Successful defense of a major national bank in a 2004 lender liability trial.
International arbitration in Dublin, Ireland, involving a biotechnology distribution agreement between an American company and a major Italian corporation.
International arbitration in London involving a commercial dispute between a Nigerian company and an American corporation.
Representation of a major utility company against the trucking company that systematically stole oil from the utility, in a lawsuit that secured a treble-damage verdict in excess of $6 million.
Representation of that utility in successful litigation against Lloyd's of London arising out of that same incident.
Defense of major law firm in civil RICO action claiming $500 million in damages before trebling.
Qui Tam (whistle-blower) lawsuits involving allegations of Medicare fraud, one of which generated the largest health care whistle-blower settlement in U.S. history.
Peter F. Vaira
Peter Vaira is a fifteen year veteran of the U.S. Department of Justice. He served in the Organized Crime Section for ten years, during which time he was the Attorney in Charge of both the Philadelphia and Chicago Strike Forces on Organized Crime. He served as United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania for five years and later was the Executive Director of the President's Commission on Organized Crime in Washington, D.C. Mr. Vaira also served as a member of the mayor's transition team in 2008.
Mr. Vaira writes a regular column for the Legal Intelligencer on Eastern District Practice. To review Mr. Vaira's columns please view the articles page of this website.http://www.vairariley.com/Bio/PeterVaira.html
Jack Riley
As an Assistant United States Attorney, Jack Riley tried numerous complex jury trials and handled numerous long-term grand jury investigations. He successfully deported a nazi war criminal in United States v. Kowalchuk for participation with German forces in the persecution of Jews in a ghetto and the occupied civilian population in a town in Russia, culminating in the death of at least 5,000 Jews in a pit killing in October, 1942. Jack Riley traveled behind the Iron Curtain and Israel to conduct depositions of holocaust victims. In 1979, he received a Special Achievement Award from the Attorney General of the United States in recognition of sustained superior performance.
In 1980, Mr. Riley was assigned by the Department of Justice for three months to the U. S. Virgins Islands on an emergency basis to assist in abbreviating a backlog of criminal cases. There he tried numerous cases, including a murder trial to a jury verdict.
In private practice, Mr. Riley has defended several high profile cases. He successfully defended Congressman McDade in United States v. McDade, a nine week jury trial where the charges included allegations of RICO, bribery, and conspiracy.
Mr. Riley has acted as the lead counsel in numerous complex civil litigation matters including the defense of a Chicago law firm in an abuse of process suit; the defense of a law firm for legal malpractice; prosecution of a bad faith claim against an insurance company for denial of coverage; the defense of a class action representative in a suit for misuse of civil process; the defense of an executive of a public utility in a class action suit by rate payers; and the defense of a Chicago based construction company in a contract and billing dispute with the City of Philadelphia.
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