Civil Trial

Retired Oakland Raiders linebacker Bill Romanowski nearly came to tears on the witness stand yesterday as he explained the difficulty of being a family man and somebody who plays a "violent, violent game. " Romanowski, who played 16 years in the NFL, including two with the Eagles, is the defendant in a civil trial. He is accused of punching tight end Marcus Williams during practice, ending the 27-year-old's short-lived NFL career and causing brain damage when his eye socket was crushed.

After two false starts in the personal-injury lawsuit against Dallas Cowboys star Deion Sanders, the civil trial opened yesterday with jury selection and opening statements in a Cincinnati courtroom. Sanders is being sued for $1 million by Riverfront Stadium security guard Herbert Kohus over a dispute after a Cincinnati Reds game two years ago. Judge Robert Kraft of Hamilton County Common Pleas Court delayed the trial twice last week after Sanders didn't show and then "had urgent family matters" that prevented him from coming.

After months and months - 32 to be exact - of filing endless motions, of sanctions, of wild accusations and testy depositions, the celebrity TV-anchor case of Alycia Lane v. Larry Mendte got raptured up yesterday. Well, something like that. Actually, the case of Lane v. Mendte and CBS Broadcasting was merely put on hold again, thanks to a last-minute stay moments before jury selection was to proceed in the much-anticipated civil trial involving the former CBS 3 co-anchors. "We were ready to go," said Lane's attorney, Paul Rosen.

It was a holiday tradition turned tragic. For more than a decade, members of the Chesilhurst Volunteer Fire Company would ride through the borough in a fire truck and hand out candy canes to children. On the evening of Dec. 23, 1997, that tradition came to an end when an 11-year-old boy was struck and killed by a sport-utility vehicle while crossing a street to join two friends after receiving his treat. Now, almost 2 1/2 years after Noreen and Charles Robinson lost their only child, Charles Jr., they hope their lawsuit accusing the borough and its officials of negligence will help ease their pain and clarify the facts of the accident.

A Common Pleas Court judge ruled yesterday that a Philadelphia woman received a fair civil trial two years ago even though the trial judge presiding over her case talked on the phone, walked around the courtroom, and climbed on a table in front of the jury. Judge Alfred J. DiBona Jr., who had the unusual task of sitting in judgment of a colleague, said in a 17-page opinion that retired Judge Marvin R. Halbert's behavior did not interfere with proceedings during the 1998 trial. DiBona noted that Halbert's conduct "may be deemed unconventional.

They'll probably never lay eyes on Ira Einhorn, but during the next several days, these six Philadelphians will decide his financial future. Five men and one woman were selected yesterday to serve as jurors in the civil trial against Einhorn. They must decide how much the famous fugitive should pay to compensate for killing his girlfriend, Holly Maddux. "Your function here is not to find him guilty or not guilty, but to assess damages," lawyer James Beasley told the jury pool yesterday.

After a 10-month criminal trial, a predominantly black jury finds O.J. Simpson innocent of two murders. After a two-month civil trial, a predominantly white jury finds him guilty. America shudders, and the enormous racial gulf the larger-than-life case has exposed grows even wider. Simpson's lawyers are to go on the offensive today as they begin to present their case to a jury of nine whites, one black and two other people in a Santa Monica courtroom. But after six weeks of damaging testimony against the former football great, the disingenuous answers he provided on the witness stand, and the lower standard the civil jury will use in reaching a verdict, it appears that an acquittal - which in this case means being found not financially liable for the murders - is less likely.

A new, high-tech courtroom on the sixth floor of City Hall is being inaugurated this week with a civil-negligence trial involving a former West Point cadet injured at the 1998 Army-Navy game. Kevin Galligan, who suffered a fractured vertebra and a sprained wrist when a railing collapsed at Veterans Stadium, is suing the city, which owns the stadium; the handrail manufacturer; and a stadium security company for monetary damages. The trial, which is in the jury-selection phase, will be in the most modern chamber in the Philadelphia court system.

Taking turns yesterday on the witness stand, the Rev. David Moyer and Episcopal Bishop Charles E. Bennison Jr. each sought to present himself as the more pastoral, principled clergyman in their unusual civil trial. Moyer, conservative rector of the Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd in Rosemont, is suing Bennison, the suspended bishop of the Diocese of Pennsylvania, on grounds that the more liberal Bennison improperly defrocked him as a priest six years ago. He seeks unspecified damages, saying that Bennison improperly denied him a church trial and appeals process that could have vindicated him and kept him a diocesan priest.

The civil trial arising from the 2005 crash of a Cessna airplane has come and gone as quietly as the full-scale Cessna P210 - a trial exhibit - that last week drew gawkers to City Hall's northwest plaza. Two weeks after the jury trial began in City Hall, the suit against Cessna and a Northeast Pennsylvania aircraft-modifying company ended Monday afternoon in a sealed, confidential settlement. The settlement was confirmed yesterday by the chambers of Common Pleas Court Judge Marlene F. Lachman.

PHOENIX - Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio's anti-illegal immigration patrols are taking center stage in federal court in Phoenix. A lawyer for a group of Latinos who filed a civil lawsuit against his department said in opening statements Thursday that the evidence will show that Arpaio and his deputies racially profiled Hispanics. "It's our view that the problem starts at the top," attorney Stan Young said. Tim Casey, who is defending Arpaio, said the patrols were properly planned out and executed and exceeded police standards.

THE JURY was entirely nameless and mostly faceless. There was the young kid who put on a dress shirt and a necktie every day, and the disheveled dude and his T-shirts, and the woman who got sick and had to be replaced, and the high-school teacher whose identity was eventually divined by reporters based upon his jury questionnaire — but they were largely just anonymous people, mostly middle-aged, some avid note-takers and some not, some outwardly engaged...

In the nearly two years since their children drowned in the Delaware River, the families of Dora Schwendtner and Szabolcs Prem have grown close. They had never met before the summer of 2010, when Dora, 16, and Szabolcs, 20, came to Philadelphia as part of a church-sponsored cross-cultural trip. But on July 7 that year, after a barge overran the Ride the Ducks tour boat, which had been anchored with engine trouble in the middle of a shipping lane, the families were thrown together by tragedy.

HOUSTON - Former Texas tycoon R. Allen Stanford, whose financial empire once spanned the Americas and made him fabulously wealthy, was convicted Tuesday of bilking his investors out of more than $7 billion through a Ponzi scheme he operated for 20 years. A day after telling U.S. District Judge David Hittner they were having trouble reaching a verdict, jurors convicted Stanford on 13 of 14 charges he faced, acquitting him on a single count of wire fraud stemming from Super Bowl tickets he allegedly used to bribe a regulator.

FORMER JUNIOR welterweight champion Arturo Gatti was murdered 2 years ago in Brazil, a panel of forensic-evidence experts said yesterday in New Jersey as it presented the results of a 10-month investigation initiated to challenge the official version that Gatti committed suicide. "This case must be reopened if authorities in Brazil have an iota of moral, ethical and legal concern for their reputation," said noted forensic pathologist Cyril Wecht, who termed the version produced by the initial criminal investigation "pure, unadulterated fiction.

A Delaware County jury has ordered Riddle Memorial Hospital and two physicians to pay more than $3.8 million in damages to the husband of a 52-year-old Media woman after finding that the doctors were negligent in her death. Janice Heffner, the co-owner of an eyeglasses manufacturing business in Media, died of a blood infection on Oct. 26, 2007, 14 hours after she was admitted to the hospital with severe stomach pains attributed at first to constipation. In the suit, Heffner's husband, William Heffner 3d, argued that Lawrence P. Wean and John A. Kotyo failed to treat his wife with the urgency that her condition demanded after it became clear that she was getting sicker.

Ex-mayor is out of Mich. prison JACKSON, Mich. - Former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick walked out of prison Tuesday, free on parole but facing a federal corruption trial that could send him back behind bars. Kilpatrick, 41, left the Southern Michigan Prison facility after serving more than a year for violating probation in a 2008 criminal case. He did not address reporters. In a statement ahead of his release, he said he would speak openly about his time behind bars after reuniting with his family.

After months and months - 32 to be exact - of filing endless motions, of sanctions, of wild accusations and testy depositions, the celebrity TV-anchor case of Alycia Lane v. Larry Mendte got raptured up yesterday. Well, something like that. Actually, the case of Lane v. Mendte and CBS Broadcasting was merely put on hold again, thanks to a last-minute stay moments before jury selection was to proceed in the much-anticipated civil trial involving the former CBS 3 co-anchors. "We were ready to go," said Lane's attorney, Paul Rosen.

Nathan A. Friedman, 80, of Cherry Hill, a longtime civil plaintiff trial lawyer who handled various high-profile personal-injury cases in South Jersey, died of complications from a long-term illness on Wednesday, Dec. 29, at his home. Mr. Friedman's success in the courtroom was said to be directly tied to his acting experience as a young adult. "He did it with such passion," his son, Joshua, said about his case presentations to juries. "He would take his acting to the jury like how he would take acting to the stage.

The civil trial arising from the 2005 crash of a Cessna airplane has come and gone as quietly as the full-scale Cessna P210 - a trial exhibit - that last week drew gawkers to City Hall's northwest plaza. Two weeks after the jury trial began in City Hall, the suit against Cessna and a Northeast Pennsylvania aircraft-modifying company ended Monday afternoon in a sealed, confidential settlement. The settlement was confirmed yesterday by the chambers of Common Pleas Court Judge Marlene F. Lachman.