Lawyer Suspended for Severe Neglect, Noncommunication
An Allegheny County lawyer has been suspended for one year based on lack of diligence and failure to communicate in a single case.
Brian Scott Quinn was retained to represent a husband and wife in a medical malpractice case in January 2017. He failed to communicate with the clients for twenty months until he sent them an email stating he would send a letter to the defendants’ insurer which there was no evidence he ever did. In December 2018, he filed a Praecipe for Writ of Summons. One of the defendants was excused, and a judgment of non pros entered in favor of the other although that judgment was later reopened. Quinn subsequently filed a complaint, which contained errors, that he had not reviewed with his clients. He did not notify his clients of any of these developments.
The case proceeded and was scheduled for prehearing conference and trial. Quinn failed to communicate any of this to his clients, who were unaware of the progress of the case until the husband learned how to access the docket and discovered the status of the matter in December 2023, nearly six years after retaining Quinn. The remaining defendant filed a motion for summary judgment which was granted, dismissing the matter with prejudice. Quinn never informed the clients of the dismissal although they were aware due to the husband’s access to the docket.
The Board concluded that Quinn had “treated his clients as if they were a mere afterthought in their own legal action.” This conduct violated numerus Rules of Professional Conduct, including
RPC 1.1 (competence),
Rule 1.2(a) (consultation with client),
Rule 1.3 (diligence), several provisions of
Rule 1.4 (communication), and
Rule 3.2 (expedite litigation). He also violated
Rule 203(b)(7) of the Rules of Disciplinary Enforcement (failure to respond to disciplinary inquiry).
The Board found one aggravating factor in a prior public reprimand for practicing while on administrative suspension. It noted one mitigating factor, that Quinn had admitted his misconduct. The Hearing Committee recommended a suspension for a year and a day which would require Quinn to petition for reinstatement. The Board concluded that this was too severe and recommended a suspension for one year, the maximum suspension that would allow Quinn to resume practice without going through a reinstatement proceeding. It rejected the request of Quinn's counsel for a period of probation.
On review, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania accepted the Board’s recommendation and suspended Quinn for one year.
By the Light of the Moon: A Judge’s and Lawyer’s Side Gigs Raise Eyebrows
The two United States Senators from Delaware have criticized a federal judge in that state for continuing to run her late husband’s public relations firm after being sworn into judicial office.
Jennifer Mascott, a judge on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, was deeply involved in daily operations at the firm Adfero for at least six months after she was confirmed as a judge in October 2025, according to former employees and clients. The firm had been founded by her late husband, and she inherited his ownership interest upon his death in 2023. Former employees said that she worked at least once a week out of Adfero’s office in Washington and oversaw the firm’s staffing, business development efforts, and client relations while performing full-time judicial duties in Wilmington and Philadelphia. The PR firm has since gone out of business.
This arrangement drew the criticism of Delaware’s two senators, Chris Coons and Lisa Blunt Rochester. Coons stated, “Secretly running a Washington PR firm while serving as an active federal judge flies in the face of the Code of Conduct. We deserve better.” Coons and Rochester also objected during her confirmation process to Mascott’s residency status in Delaware, noting that she was not admitted to the Delaware bar, had never practiced law in Delaware, and served as faculty at two D.C. law schools prior to her appointment, although she and her husband owned a beach house in the state. The senators issued a statement
saying, “As far as we know, her relationship to Delaware is confined to a vacation beach house she sometimes visits in our state.”
Judge Mascott defended her continuing involvement with the firm as a managing trustee in a family business which judges are permitted to maintain as long as they do not cause questions about the judge’s impartiality. Legal ethics experts stated that the issue of ownership of outside businesses by a judge is a “
gray area.”
A solicitor from England did not fare as well when his side job came to light.
Matthew Moss worked as an employment solicitor at Optimal Solicitors, mainly remotely from his home in Cheshire. Around 2021, however, he also began working as a “legal expert” for
JustAnswer, a US-based website which allows members of the public to seek advice from lawyers. He failed to advise Optimal of this employment although his contract required him to do so and to obtain Optimal’s consent. At times, he made more money in this side employment than he did in his primary job at Optimal.
Optimal discovered this employment in May 2024 when Moss was informed that he was being made redundant. During his three-month notice period, the firm’s legal director became concerned about the “quality and quantity” of Moss’s work. The firm discovered that Moss had sent a substantial number of emails from his work account to his personal email address, including documents showing payments from
JustAnswer. He made things worse for himself by
lying about the employment and the payments, telling the firm his brother was performing the work and that the payments were merely passed through his account.
Moss told the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal that he was under extreme stress and lied about the source of his income because he “panicked.” Nonetheless, the SDT found the conduct extremely serious and ordered that he be struck from the rolls of solicitors, the English equivalent of disbarment. Moss accepted the penalty as part of an agreed resolution.
Law Firm, City Clash Over Sidewalk Ads/Warnings
A personal injury law firm
has clashed with the Cities of Hartford and West Hartford, Connecticut, over numerous temporary messages the firm had printed onto the city sidewalks. The messages contained safety-oriented themes such as “Look before you walk” but also contained the firm’s name, telephone number, and “Personal Injury Lawyers.”
The firm of Trantolo & Trantolo, which has offices in Connecticut, New York and Massachusetts, had the messages stenciled on sidewalks in at least fifteen places in Hartford. The messages were apparently created by the firm’s outdoor advertising company which has executed similar temporary sidewalk campaigns in cities across the country. The firm argued that the messages were created using either power washing or temporary chalk – not spray paint – and were always intended to be temporary and that they provided important safety warnings in a city that “
has a serious road safety problem.” Scott Trantolo of Trantolo & Trantolo told the media, "The chalk will disappear. The need for safer roads will not."
The City of Hartford, on the other hand, contended that the stencils were outdoor advertising in violation of the city code which requires advance permission in writing from the city for any advertisement on city property. "The unauthorized tagging required Public Works to divert staff and resources from scheduled maintenance activities in order to address this unexpected cleanup," said John Phillips of the Department of Public Works. Between the two cities, nearly forty examples of the stencils were found.
The law firm said in a statement that the stencils were intended to be temporary and would be removed. The City of West Hartford power-washed twenty-four stencils away, but Hartford Mayor Arunan Arulampalam said that many of the stencils were still present when interviewed by
NBC Connecticut. He told the station that the City was considering filing a disciplinary complaint against the firm in addition to billing it for cleanup costs.
Sixth Circuit: Judge Not Immune for Handcuffing Student Who Falls Asleep
The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals held that a Michigan judge was not acting within his judicial role and did not have immunity for an incident in which he ordered a teenaged student who fell asleep during a talk he gave to be handcuffed, placed in a cell, dressed in prison garb, and put on trial in front of her peers and over the internet.
The plaintiff’s daughter in
Till v. King was a fifteen-year-old high school student on a field trip to Judge Kenneth J. King’s court. After adjourning court, Judge King took off his judicial robe and was speaking to the class about his career as a lawyer. The session was netcast over the court’s YouTube channel.
During the session a student, identified as ELG, fell asleep. Judge King “berated and humiliated” ELG for nodding off. ELG apologized, but, shortly thereafter, she fell asleep again. At that point Judge King suggested she retire to the restroom. When she returned, she was accosted by a court employee who placed her in handcuffs. She was taken to a detention cell and told to strip down and don a jail jumpsuit. She removed her hoodie but put the jumpsuit on over the rest of her clothing. She was held in the cell for hours and then taken back to the courtroom where Judge King then put her on a mock trial (mock being the operative word) in which he grilled her about personal details and threatened to send her to “Juvie,” regaling her with “vulgar stories of beatings and feces at the county’s juvenile detention center, falsely casting her as a dishonest, disrespectful delinquent.” He enlisted her peers to serve as a mock jury of public opinion and decide whether to let her go home to her mother and grandmother or to serve time in the juvenile jail. She was released after the “mock trial,” all of which was netcast over the court’s YouTube channel. Judge King later told reporters that the whole process was his version of “Scared Straight” to punish the teen for disrespecting him.
ELG’s mother sued King in Federal court, alleging several claims including malicious prosecution, unlawful arrest, intentional infliction of emotional distress, invasion of privacy, and false arrest and imprisonment. Judge King filed a motion to dismiss, asserting judicial immunity. This District Court denied his motion to dismiss, and he filed an interlocutory appeal which was before the Court of Appeals.
The Court of Appeals found that King was not acting in a judicial role when he took the actions he did against ELG. The Court noted that to qualify as a judicial act, a judge’s actions must “further[] [an] official act or sanction.” The function of engaging in educational activities relating to his career as a lawyer was outside the scope of his judicial role and was not protected by immunity. The court further found that court was not in session, the educational talk was not related to any judicial act or the maintenance of order in the court, and that disciplining and scaring children did not reflect a “function normally performed by a judge.”
Accordingly, the Court of Appeals upheld the decision of the District Court to deny the motion to dismiss and remanded the matter to the District Court for trial.
