Plaintiffs

Twenty-one former students at Neumann College in Aston have filed suit against the school, alleging that it did not clearly tell them that its new three-year master's program in physical therapy lacked accreditation when they enrolled in the fall of 1994. As a result, it took the plaintiffs an additional fourth year to get their degrees, according to Media attorney Jon J. Auritt, who filed the suit Tuesday in Delaware County Court. "We have not seen the [lawsuit]. We can't possibly comment," said Stephen Bell, a Neumann College spokesman, yesterday.

A federal judge in Philadelphia yesterday dismissed a civil racketeering lawsuit that sought millions of dollars in damages from Mellon Bank and officials of the now-bankrupt Allegheny hospital chain. The lawsuit was filed in 1998 on behalf of people and groups who donated grants or endowments to the hospital chain for research and other charitable projects, and on behalf of project research scientists. The plaintiffs contended that hospital executives and trustees "looted" about $70 million from "restricted and purely charitable" endowment funds to provide life-support to a dying hospital group while lining their own pockets.

Testimony in a groundbreaking diet-drug lawsuit was to resume this morning in New Brunswick, N.J., with the jury expected to hear from the plaintiffs for the first time. The class action filed by Lynn Vadino, Karol DeBeradinis and Deneen Giantonnio seeks long-term medical monitoring for about 100,000 New Jersey residents who took Pondimin or its chemically similar successor, Redux, before the drugs were withdrawn from the market two years ago after being linked to heart-valve disease.

A federal judge yesterday refused to dismiss a lawsuit that seeks to legalize the medical use of marijuana, ruling that the plaintiffs deserved the chance to prove the government had no reason to deny the drug to seriously ill people. "The answer must come from facts, not the abstractions and dogma presently in the record," wrote U.S. District Judge Marvin Katz in a 25-page opinion and order. Katz's ruling keeps alive a class-action lawsuit that many legal experts assumed had no chance of success when it was filed in July.

A new proposal by a group of atheists seems unlikely to resolve the lawsuit over the Ten Commandments plaque on the Chester County Courthouse. The case returns to federal court today for a mediation hearing. The plaintiffs have proposed replacing the bronze plaque of the Decalogue with the Bill of Rights. Under the proposal outlined in court documents, the plaintiffs suggest the plaque be auctioned and proceeds used to purchase a display of the first 10 amendments to the Constitution.

John and Stacy Hanrahan of Springfield were looking to make some money in their spare time when they signed on as Amway distributors in January 1992. But seven months in the Amway network made them poorer rather than richer, they say in a suit filed last week in U.S. District Court in Philadelphia. Their income from selling Amway products and recruiting more distributors didn't cover the cost of motivational tapes they were badgered to buy and sales rallies they paid to attend, according to the suit.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit yesterday ruled against 10 plaintiffs who had claimed that they or their relatives developed cancer as a result of the 1979 Three Mile Island nuclear accident, but 1,990 other plaintiffs will get a second chance to plead their cases. The decision follows a 1996 ruling by U.S. District Judge Sylvia Rambo, who threw out 10 sample cases singled out for a "mini-trial," and extended that ruling to the additional 1,990 plaintiffs. She based her decision on a lack of scientific evidence linking the accident to their health problems.

More than a decade ago, the telecommunications company RCN Corp. viewed itself as a potential competitor to Comcast Corp. One national magazine wrote about it as "The Little Phone Company That Can?" Then, according to a long-running antitrust lawsuit in Philadelphia federal court, Comcast thwarted RCN's expansion into cable-TV business in Philadelphia by lobbying against RCN with government officials, offering customers discounts in areas where RCN would expand, and restricting RCN's access to contractors who would build out its network.

Philadelphia court officials have proposed new emergency regulations designed to help plaintiffs in asbestos lawsuits get their cases tried before they die. Under the plan, which appears unprecedented, jurors would watch trials from start to finish - including, if the trial judge desired, his instructions to the jury and the lawyers' arguments - on videotape. The proposal would theoretically allow one judge to be available as several different juries watched the videotaped proceedings, rather than having several judges sitting through live testimony to rule on objections.

Three Chester County residents charged yesterday that they were victims of an elaborate fraud by an organization that allegedly sold phony pizza franchises in the Philadelphia area. William Gordon, his wife, Lucy Gordon, and his half brother, Matthew Levinson, charged in a lawsuit in U.S. District Court that they had lost $45,000 in the alleged scam after being shown "a detailed, written prospectus" about the business and going through "staged events such as equipment testing pizza-making session.