Alan Neil Bloch

In Walker v. Massanari, consolidated with Garris v. Commissioner of Social Security, plaintiffs' counsel sought court approval of contingency fee agreements and payment of withheld past-due Social Security benefits as attorney fees under 42 U.S.C. § 406(b) after obtaining favorable administrative decisions on remand. The district court denied both motions as untimely, finding that counsel had received written notice of the awards years earlier (in 2004 and 2005) but filed the motions in 2007, well beyond any applicable deadline. The court noted that counsel had already received EAJA fees for the same court work, failed to substantiate the fee amounts or notices, and offered no valid excuse for the delay despite an evidentiary hearing on remand from the Third Circuit.

procedurefederal power

This case involves a wrongful death and medical negligence lawsuit brought by the parents of a five-year-old child who died after receiving steroid treatment for autism from an Illinois doctor and his practice. The defendants moved to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction or alternatively to transfer venue, arguing their contacts with Pennsylvania were insufficient since the initial treatment occurred in Illinois. The court denied the motion, holding that it could exercise specific personal jurisdiction because the doctor provided ongoing medical monitoring and dosage instructions via telephone to the plaintiffs while they were in Pennsylvania, creating sufficient minimum contacts. The court also found venue proper in the Western District of Pennsylvania since a substantial part of the events giving rise to the claims occurred there.

proceduretorts & liabilityhealthcare

The case concerned disputes arising from the 1988 formation of Delta Star, Inc. as a spin-off from H.K. Porter via an employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) financed by bank loans, in which former president and ESOP trustee Andrew Patton participated as a key decision-maker and beneficiary of related benefit plans. Delta Star and the ESOP trustees brought ERISA claims against Patton for breach of fiduciary duty and self-dealing in the transaction, while Patton asserted counterclaims for unpaid amounts under promissory notes, director fees, and indemnification. The court held that Patton had breached his ERISA fiduciary duties, that certain of his contract and note claims had been resolved or waived for lack of supporting evidence at trial, and that he was not entitled to indemnification because ERISA prohibits agreements relieving fiduciaries of liability for breaches and his conduct involved willful misconduct. Core reasoning relied on the detailed facts of the financing structure, stock allocation favoring management, Patton's refusal to appoint independent trustees, and explicit ERISA provisions barring indemnification.

labor & employmentbusiness & regulatory

The case was a civil enforcement action by the United States against the Municipality of Penn Hills for alleged violations of the Clean Water Act at four of its sewage treatment plants. The government sought injunctive relief and civil penalties based on unauthorized bypassing of waste and discharges exceeding NPDES permit effluent limits. The court granted summary judgment in part on liability under Counts I and II, holding Penn Hills liable for bypassing in violation of permit conditions and section 402 and for exceeding effluent limits in violation of sections 301 and 402. The ruling rested on the undisputed terms of the NPDES permits and evidence from the municipality's discharge monitoring reports; the court denied summary judgment on the precise number of violations and deferred that issue to trial.

environmentbusiness & regulatoryfederal power

The case involved vendors who held city-issued licenses to sell goods near Three Rivers Stadium; after the City of Pittsburgh amended its vending ordinance in 1995 to prohibit sales within 30 feet of the stadium property (where most of their revenue was earned), the plaintiffs sued the city and stadium authority alleging that the change effectively revoked their licenses. They claimed violations of substantive and procedural due process, equal protection under the U.S. and Pennsylvania constitutions, federal antitrust law, and related provisions, and sought an injunction to restore prior vending rights. The court granted the defendants' motion for summary judgment and denied the plaintiffs' cross-motion, holding that the vendors had no constitutionally protected property interest in vending at any particular location and that the remaining claims likewise failed as a matter of law on the undisputed facts.

business & regulatorycivil rightspropertyprocedure

In Williams v. Price, death row inmates at SCI Greene brought a § 1983 action challenging prison conditions in the capital case unit, including strip searches before non-contact attorney visits under the Fourth Amendment, denial of contact legal visits and equal outdoor exercise time and activities under the Equal Protection Clause, and lack of confidential attorney meeting rooms under a constitutional privacy right. After de novo review of the magistrate judge's report and the parties' objections, the court granted defendants' motion for summary judgment on the strip-search, equal-protection, and related claims, finding no constitutional violations based on security concerns, differences between facilities, and plaintiffs' concessions on certain issues. The court denied summary judgment on the privacy claim regarding confidential meeting rooms, allowing that issue to proceed. The ruling adopted the magistrate's recommendations in full under the Magistrates Act.

criminal lawcivil rightsprocedure

This case involved a federal habeas corpus petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2254 by Fred W. Patosky, who challenged his Pennsylvania state convictions for indecent assault and harassment arising from an incident with a coworker. Petitioner argued that the trial court's denial of access to the victim's psychiatric records—protected by a statutory psychotherapist-patient privilege under 42 Pa.C.S. § 5944—violated his constitutional rights to due process and confrontation, after the records had been inadvertently reviewed by the prosecutor. The magistrate judge's report, adopted by the district court after de novo review, recommended denial of the petition, finding that the state courts had properly applied the absolute privilege, that any prior review caused no unfair advantage, and that no substantial showing of a denial of a constitutional right had been made. The court therefore denied the petition and a certificate of appealability.

criminal lawprocedure

The case involved Anserphone, a provider of live telephone answering services, suing Bell Atlantic and its subsidiary Bell-PA for alleged violations of Section 2 of the Sherman Act, breach of the duty of good faith and fair dealing, and tortious interference with contractual relations. Anserphone claimed that service problems with Bell-PA's call-forwarding features harmed its business and that Bell-PA improperly entered the answering services market using its monopoly power in telephone services. On defendants' motion for summary judgment, the court granted the motion in part and denied it in part. The court reasoned that Anserphone failed to produce sufficient evidence of monopoly power in the relevant market to support its antitrust claims, while allowing some state-law claims to proceed.

business & regulatorytorts & liabilityprocedure

The case concerned a trucking sole proprietor who sought a refund of employment taxes paid to the IRS after treating his truck drivers as independent contractors rather than employees from 1982 onward, and who claimed protection from liability under Section 530 of the Revenue Act of 1978. The IRS denied the refund, assessed additional taxes for 1988-1990, and moved for partial summary judgment solely on the Section 530 defense. The court granted the motion, holding that the plaintiff could not satisfy Section 530's substantial consistency requirement because he had treated a driver as an employee in 1978-1979 under the same business and taxpayer identity, with no new enterprise having been created.

taxeslabor & employment

In this case, plaintiff Optimum, S.A., an Argentine company, alleged that defendants Legent Corp., Computer Associates International, Inc., and Computer Associates de Argentina, S.A., violated Sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act by conspiring to terminate its exclusive marketing contract for software in Argentina and to monopolize the Argentine market, along with related contract and tort claims under state law and Argentine law. The court granted defendants' motion to dismiss the entire complaint for lack of subject matter jurisdiction. For the antitrust claims, the court held that the alleged foreign conduct did not sufficiently plead a direct, substantial, and reasonably foreseeable effect on U.S. domestic, import, or export commerce as required by the Foreign Trade Antitrust Improvements Act, 15 U.S.C. § 6a, even though some defendants were U.S. companies. For the remaining claims, the court found no diversity jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1332 because plaintiff and defendant CA Argentina were both Argentine citizens, destroying complete diversity.

business & regulatoryprocedure

This case involved banquet captains employed by a private social club who sued under the Fair Labor Standards Act, claiming that the club's tip pooling arrangements violated minimum wage and overtime rules and that the club failed to maintain proper payroll records. The court granted summary judgment to the club on the wage and overtime claims stemming from tip pooling but denied it on the record-keeping claim. The core reasoning was that the employees' collective bargaining agreement permitted the club to control and redistribute tips among staff and managers, provided the employees still received at least the minimum hourly wage plus overtime where applicable, consistent with FLSA allowances for tip pooling.

labor & employmentbusiness & regulatory

The case involved a Pennsylvania bus company that provided airport transfer services challenging a 1993 resolution by the Port Authority of Allegheny County, a governmental agency regulating passenger transportation. The resolution expanded competition in the plaintiff's service area while preserving another carrier's exclusive rights in a different territory, which the plaintiff alleged violated the Commerce Clause, the Sherman Antitrust Act, and the Fourteenth Amendment. The court granted the defendant's motion for summary judgment on all claims and denied the plaintiff's cross-motion. It reasoned that the resolution did not discriminate against interstate commerce in favor of intrastate commerce, that the antitrust claim was barred by the state action exemption, and that the Fourteenth Amendment claim lacked merit as the defendant qualified as a state agency.

business & regulatoryfederal power

The case concerns an employee, Lawrence Dugan, and his wife who sued Bell Atlantic, Bell Telephone of Pennsylvania, and a company vice president over claims including RICO violations, age discrimination under federal and state law, intentional infliction of emotional distress, wrongful discharge, breach of contract, misrepresentation, and loss of consortium. The allegations centered on a company scheme to cover up theft and fraud at Bell of PA during investigations by the Pennsylvania PUC and state senate committee, in which Dugan refused orders to destroy subpoenaed records and allegedly faced retaliation through job elimination and failure to reassign him. The court granted in part and denied in part the defendants' motion to dismiss the amended complaint, applying doctrines such as workers' compensation exclusivity to bar certain tort claims, public policy exceptions to at-will employment for wrongful discharge, and pleading requirements for RICO and contract claims while dismissing others like some emotional distress and breach allegations.

labor & employmentcriminal lawbusiness & regulatory

This case involves a dispute between property owner Graham Oil Company and former tenant BP Oil Company regarding subsurface contamination of leased land caused by underground gasoline storage tanks removed in 1992. Graham asserted twelve claims, including federal and state environmental statutes (RCRA, HSCA, and Pennsylvania Tank Act) plus common-law torts such as strict liability, nuisance, trespass, and indemnification. The court denied BP's motion to dismiss portions of Counts I and II and all of Counts III, VI, IX, and X, holding that private actions for damages are permitted under the cited statutes and that the nuisance and ultrahazardous-activity theories were adequately pled. The court granted dismissal of Counts XI and XII, ruling that the trespass claim failed because BP was in lawful possession when the contamination occurred and that the indemnification claim was not ripe absent any payment of third-party damages.

environmentpropertyproceduretorts & liability

This case concerns a dispute between Chemetron Investments and its excess insurers over coverage for liabilities at multiple sites involving pollution, contamination, and possible nuclear materials under various insurance policies. The court denied the defendants' motions for summary judgment, which argued that pollution exclusions, nuclear exclusions, insufficient policy thresholds, lack of notice, owned property provisions, and absence of an occurrence barred coverage. It granted in part the plaintiffs' motion for partial summary judgment, dismissing the defendants' affirmative defense based on Part III of the nuclear energy liability exclusions, but denied it in other respects. The core reasoning applied Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 56 standards, determined that Illinois law governed coverage issues after a choice-of-law analysis showing conflicts primarily on the pollution exclusion's 'sudden and accidental' exception, and found genuine issues of material fact or insufficient evidence to resolve the remaining defenses as a matter of law.

environmentbusiness & regulatoryprocedure

The case involved claims by unions representing mine workers against Florence Mining Company, Quent, Inc., and several utility companies for alleged violations of the WARN Act arising from the permanent closure of coal mining and processing facilities without 60 days' advance notice to employees. The court granted the defendants' motions for summary judgment. The core reasoning was that the utility companies did not qualify as a joint employer or single enterprise with the mining companies under WARN Act standards, given the facilities' geographic and operational separation, distinct workforces and management, and the utilities' lack of direct control over employment matters. Arguments that an assurance letter created statutory liability or that the utilities guaranteed WARN obligations were also rejected.

labor & employment

This case involves pension plan trustees who purchased guaranteed investment contracts from an insurance company and later sought to liquidate them amid the insurer's financial issues, alleging improper calculations of market value adjustments and denial of surplus credits. The plaintiffs brought claims under ERISA for breach of fiduciary duty and prohibited transactions, along with securities law violations, bad faith, fraud, and other state and federal common law claims. The court granted the defendant's motion to dismiss in part and denied it in part, dismissing the securities claims after they were withdrawn and addressing ERISA preemption and fiduciary status. It held that the insurer was not a fiduciary under ERISA with respect to the plan assets at issue and that most non-ERISA claims were preempted but could potentially proceed as federal common law claims for breach of contract.

labor & employmentbusiness & regulatoryprocedure

This case involves the Laborers Combined Funds suing Jeffrey and Anthony Ruscitto individually to recover unpaid contributions to employee benefit plans from their corporation, Blackhawk Construction, Inc., under ERISA sections 502 and 515, along with related claims under Pennsylvania's Wage Payment and Collection Law. The defendants moved to dismiss under Rules 12(b)(1) and 12(b)(6), arguing that the complaints failed to properly plead a corporate veil-piercing or alter ego theory, that this deprived the court of federal question jurisdiction, and that any ERISA claims would preempt the state law claims. The court denied the motions, holding that the complaints sufficiently alleged veil-piercing factors such as failure to observe corporate formalities, inadequate records, siphoning of funds, and undercapitalization under the notice pleading standard of Rule 8(a) rather than the particularity requirement of Rule 9(b), which established both ERISA jurisdiction and supplemental jurisdiction over the WPCL claims.

labor & employmentbusiness & regulatoryprocedure

The case involves plaintiffs RustEvader Corporation and McCready suing defendants Cowatch Jr. and Sr. in Pennsylvania state court for breach of an employment agreement's confidentiality, assignment, and noncompetition clauses, seeking assignment of U.S. Patent No. 4,767,512, an injunction against disclosure or assignment of the patent, and an accounting of profits. Plaintiffs moved to remand the action after removal to federal court, arguing the claims arose solely under state contract law. The court denied the motion, holding that federal jurisdiction existed under 28 U.S.C. § 1338 because the requested relief necessarily required resolving a substantial question of federal patent law—specifically, inventorship under 35 U.S.C. § 256—to determine ownership and entitlement to assignment, as established by Christianson v. Colt Industries and MCV, Inc. v. King-Seeley Thermos Co.

business & regulatoryprocedurefederal power

This case involves consolidated breach of contract and related claims by Portland General Electric and the Eugene Water and Electric Board against Westinghouse Electric Corporation arising from a contract to supply a nuclear steam supply system and allegedly defective steam generators for the Trojan Nuclear Power Plant. Plaintiffs asserted claims including negligence, negligent misrepresentation, fraud, and federal and Oregon RICO violations. The court granted in part and denied in part Westinghouse's motions to dismiss, dismissing the negligence and negligent misrepresentation claims under Oregon's economic loss doctrine because plaintiffs alleged only economic harms without personal injury or damage to other property and without an independent tort duty separate from the contract. It also dismissed the portion of the RICO claims alleging a violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1962(b) as to the Trojan project enterprise but denied dismissal of the remaining claims, including fraud and other RICO counts, finding sufficient allegations of an independent duty or intended reliance.

business & regulatorytorts & liabilityprocedurecriminal law