Senior Litigation Partner Obtains Compulsory Non-suit Victory for Client

Senior litigation partner, Steven G. Leventhal, Esq., just obtained a compulsory non-suit victory for his client on day ten of a trial being held in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas before the Honorable Kenneth Powell.

The case involved the serious, permanent injuries of a non-union carpenter who fell three stories through a temporary set of stairs erected by an Amish carpenter roughly six months prior to the accident.

The case against Mr. Leventhal’s client involved the claim that the drywalling subcontractors disturbed the connection of the temporary stairs to the party wall in order to hang their sheet rock, but then failed to properly reconnect the two safety components. Complicating the matter was the fact that the plaintiff’s co-workers discarded all of the physical evidence of the accident scene (without taking any photographs to preserve the scene), such that the experts were only left with pure conjecture about the cause of the loss.

While Mr. Leventhal’s clients were not joined in before the tolling of the two year statute of limitations by the plaintiff’s camp, they were joined in for common law and contractual contribution and indemnity by the general contractor and independent job framers. Leventhal successfully argued that neither the plaintiff’s expert nor any of the defense experts relied on any facts introduced at time of trial, and that the dry wall finishers never disturbed the party wall/stair connection to perform their unique job function warranting immediate dismissal.