Disbarred Bucks County lawyer Joseph P. Guarrasi could have expected stern treatment from the justice system after being convicted of plotting to murder a man so he could turn his house into a sex club. But having to pay for his rides to and from prison?

On Sept. 14, a three-judge panel of the Commonwealth Court allowed Guarrasi to clear a procedural hurdle in his case against Bucks County, its sheriff’s department and its clerk of courts, which he sued after being stuck with a $3,500 transportation bill incurred from 12 trips to and from his cell to the Bucks County courthouse furnished by the sheriff’s department from 2007 to 2015. During that period, Guarrasi was litigating, in forma pauperis, his Post-Conviction Relief Act claims.