Lawyer

WIFFLE ball may not be an Olympic sport, but its practitioners are as devoted as a Jamaican bobsled team or hammer throwers in kilts. One of the sport's stars in the '60s was a robust Friends' Central kid named Bob Blau. His prowess with a bat he had painted red and blue and named the KesselKill (after a boy he used to harass with cherry bombs) was described in an article in Sports Illustrated in 1982 by Franz Lidz, a Cheltenham High School grad and Wiffle-ball practitioner who played with Bob Blau and other kids in a back yard in Penn Valley.

A former administrator from Truebright Science Academy Charter School will testify about operations of the North Philadelphia charter when a school district hearing resumes Thursday. The charter school, which is linked to a controversial Turkish imam, is fighting to remain open. A Common Pleas Court judge ruled in late February that Susan Farley-Ellison could be compelled to testify even though she had reached a settlement agreement with Truebright that barred her from mentioning the agreement or saying anything negative about the school.

The lawyer for West Philadelphia abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell accused a police crime scene officer of selecting evidence and photos to buttress the prosecution claim that Gosnell's clinic was filthy and unsanitary. "That's a new ultrasound," said Jack McMahon, referring to a photo of a clinic procedure room taken by Officer John Taggart. "So you seized the older one and left the new one? Correct?" "Correct," replied Taggart in a matter-of-fact tone. Taggart, a veteran of almost 22 years with the police department, and other members of the Crime Scene Unit, retrieved equipment from the clinic and arranged it in the well of the courtroom where Gosnell's murder trial is being held.

Testimony is to resume Tuesday in the murder trial of West Philadelphia abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell after a day lost because of a lawyer's illness. Monday's trial session was canceled because Gosnell's lawyer, Jack McMahon, was ill with fever and symptoms of cold or flu. The prosecution is entering the third week presenting evidence contending that Gosnell, 72, committed first-degree murder in the killing of seven infants born live and viable during illegal late-term abortions. He is also charged with third-degree murder in the 2009 death of a Virginia woman during an abortion.

Government elusive in Italy MILAN - Italy remained in political gridlock Thursday after the center-left leader announced he had failed to form a government. Pier Luigi Bersani, who has been talking with parties since Friday, expressed some bitterness when he told reporters at the president's office in Rome that he found "unacceptable" attempts by some parties to set "preclusions and conditions. " The failure makes more likely a possible technical government with a well-defined mission to take on urgent tasks, which include rewriting the election law, and push through some measures that have broader acceptance, like cutting political costs.

Daniel Mungall Jr., 97, of Radnor, a lawyer whose singing, and the friendships he formed through music weaved a sustaining thread throughout his life, died Monday, March 18, at the Quadrangle in Haverford, where he had lived for the last few years. Well into his 90s, Mr. Mungall continued to sing with the Orpheus Club of Philadelphia, whose goal is "the attainment of the greatest possible excellence in the performance of part songs for male voice. " Mr. Mungall joined the club in 1942 and was president from 1974 to 1976.

James Nabrit III, 80, a civil rights lawyer who argued several prominent cases involving education and free speech before the U.S. Supreme Court from the 1960s to the 1980s, died Friday, March 22, of lung cancer at Suburban Hospital in Bethesda, Md., said Elaine Jones, the former president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, where Nabrit worked for 30 years. Mr. Nabrit's most noteworthy case may have been Keyes v. School District No. 1, Denver (1973). It was the first school-desegregation case to reach the Supreme Court from a state that did not have segregation laws.

Like many class-action settlements, the $3.5 billion payout announced in 1999 by the makers of the diet drug Fen-Phen unleashed a stampede of claims, including thousands that were bogus. Many came courtesy of Abdur Razzak Tai, a Florida cardiologist who expected more than $1,000 from a plaintiffs' lawyer each time he certified a Fen-Phen patient with heart damage - a marker that often led to a six-figure payout. Tai signed more than 12,000 physician reports over several years.

IN HIS MARCH 25th letter, Chris Isles suggested that Jack McMahon, the attorney defending Dr. Kermit Gosnell in his murder trial, is attempting to play on the sympathies of minority jury members by suggesting that Dr. Gosnell, who is African-American, is a victim of "prosecutorial lynching. " Well, of course he is, Mr. Isles; he'd be crazy not to! Jack McMahon is (literally) fighting for his client's life, as the District Attorney's Office would like none other than to see Dr. Gosnell put to death!

PENNSYLVANIA'S highest court faces what can reasonably be called one heck of a mess. And if you think it's just stuff lawyers fight over that can't affect you, the economy, state politics and whatever's left of trust in government, think again. The state Supreme Court will soon decide on (still-pending) legislative redistricting, issues critical to the future of natural-gas drilling . . . and it's only a matter of time before it (again) gets a case involving voter ID. This mix is muddied by infighting and the fact that the seven-member court is short one justice and operating with a three-three party split.