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By Sheena Delazio sdelazio@timesleader.com
Staff Writer
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WILKES-BARRE – A Hazleton law firm seeking to overturn a $3.4 million legal malpractice award wants to use information regarding criminal charges against two Luzerne County judges in its appeal.

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Attorneys for the Laputka, Bayless, Ecker and Cohn law firm filed a motion Thursday asking a judge to allow them to use information released this week regarding the plea agreements of former judges Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan.

The Laputka firm is seeking to negate a jury verdict entered in favor of Bernadette Slusser. Slusser’s family filed a legal malpractice case against the Laputka firm alleging it provided faulty legal representation in a series of lawsuits related to land transactions.

The Slussers were represented by the Powell Law Firm.

In the motion filed on Thursday, Jeffrey McCarron, an attorney for the Laputka firm, said the recent allegations against Ciavarella and Conahan should be included in their post-trial motions. The two former jurists, who were removed from the county bench by the state Supreme Court this week, face federal charges in an ongoing public corruption probe. They are accused of taking $2.6 million in kickbacks in connection with a juvenile detention center.

Attorney Robert Powell, a partner in the law firm that represents the Slussers, once was an owner of the juvenile center in Pittston Township.

McCarron said the information should be included because Powell and PA Child Care “made payments to Judges Ciavarella and Conahan for official actions and anticipated official actions in connection with the juvenile detention center … .”

McCarron said the allegations against the two judges are relevant, and the Laputka firm is entitled to a new trial because of “bias” on the part of Ciavarella, the trial judge in this action.

Ciavarella recused himself from the case in June, after an attorney with the Laputka firm accused the judge of showing favoritism to Powell during the trial. The case was then forwarded to Centre County Senior Judge Charles Brown.

The new information should be included, the filing states, because of Ciavarella’s “bias, partiality, lack of candor about and non-disclosure of his financial and criminal relationship with Robert Powell.”

Powell has not been charged and has not directly identified in the case presented by federal investigators.

Jonathan Lang, an attorney for the Powell law firm, could not be reached for comment Thursday.