Charlene S. Seibert of Marshall Dennehey Warner Coleman & Goggin. Courtesy photo
Early in my career, I frequently received a surprising response when I told people that I defended lawyers in legal malpractice lawsuits: “I didn’t know you could sue lawyers.” Indeed you can, of course, as with any professional. Yet that sentiment does not ring true in today’s environment, where legal malpractice claims are much more commonplace and litigants are all too happy to point the finger at their lawyers for the frustrating woes that often come with the vagaries of litigation (and its results).
In an article published in the American Bar Association Journal in 1982, then-U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger was quoted saying that “it appears that people tend to be less satisfied with one round of litigation and are demanding a ‘second bite of the apple’ far more than in earlier times.” It was this quotation that later made its way into the hotly controversial opinion of Muhammad v. Strassburger, McKenna, Messer, Shilobod & Gutnick, 587 A.2d 1346 (1991), wherein Pennsylvania Supreme Court Chief Justice Ralph Cappy observed:
