From the Chair
 

As we enter another new year, we have occasion to reflect upon the trials, challenges, and successes of the previous twelve months. I encourage you to evaluate your personal and professional goals. Do they align with your law practice? How can you take meaningful steps toward those goals while honoring the ethics of your chosen vocation?
 
The Disciplinary Board, too, continues to refine its work. Its Members and staff strive to strengthen the Board's relationship with the public, the legal community, and the courts.
 
Central to this effort is the Board's commitment to transparency. All public proceedings are livestreamed on the  Board’s YouTube channel. I encourage you to take advantage of this access to gain a deeper understanding of the Board's work and the ethics of law practice in Pennsylvania.
 
I look forward to new opportunities to advance the Board's mission: to protect the public, maintain the integrity of the legal profession, and safeguard the reputation and independence of the courts. On behalf of the Board, I wish you all a year of good health, strong work-life balance, and meaningful growth.
 
With gratitude,
 
David S. Senoff
Board Chair

December 2025

Probation Tyler Alan Lindquist	Suspension Bruce K. Warren, Jr. Paul T. Sosnowski
Disbarment Kenneth C. Marano James J. Vassallo, Jr. Jennifer E. Watson

December 2025

Upcoming Public Proceedings

The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania is aided by select boards, committees, commissions, and councils consisting of more than 180 appointed volunteers – most, but not all, are lawyers and judges. The panels have a wide range of responsibilities and functions. Some make recommendations to the Court for amendments, revisions, or simplification of court procedural rules. Others regulate the practice of law, oversee continuing legal education for lawyers, and administer funds to assist individuals unable to pay for legal services. Still others advise on keeping the courts free of bias and discrimination and on long-range planning.
 
There are currently vacancies on the following court entities:

Disciplinary Board — One vacancy is for a non-lawyer elector, and one vacancy is for a member of the Pennsylvania bar. Applicants should be knowledgeable about the Pennsylvania Rules of Professional Conduct and Pennsylvania Rules of Disciplinary Enforcement.
 
Board of Law Examiners — Applicants must be members of the Pennsylvania bar. Applicants should be knowledgeable about law school curriculum, legal practice, and attorney ethical obligations. Law school faculty may not serve on this Board. Additionally, applicants should not apply for a membership position if, during that position’s term of service, they will have immediate family members who will be taking the bar examination or seeking membership in the Pennsylvania bar.
 
Domestic Relations Procedural Rules Committee — Applicants should be knowledgeable about the Pennsylvania Rules of Civil Procedure governing domestic relations matters and should be experienced in family law practice in Pennsylvania.
 
Pennsylvania Lawyers Fund for Client Security Board — This vacancy is for a member of the Pennsylvania bar. Lawyer applicants should be knowledgeable about the practice of federal or state law in Pennsylvania and about a lawyer’s duties to clients.
 

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If you would like to be considered to serve on a board, committee, advisory group, or related independent entity, email the application, cover letter, resume, and other pertinent information expressing your reasons of interest to SCApplications@pacourts.us.

More information may be found on the Unified Judicial System of Pennsylvania website.
 

Two Pennsylvania Lawyers Agree to Discipline for Neglect

A pair of Pennsylvania lawyers agreed to disciplinary dispositions involving suspensions, one served and one stayed by probation, for patterns of neglect, lack of diligence, and related issues.
 
Paul T. Sosnowski of Philadelphia faced disciplinary charges on two counts – a serious pattern of neglect, in one case, and a second for conviction of Driving Under the Influence which was not reported to the Office of Disciplinary Counsel. Over a period of about eight months, he failed to comply with discovery or with orders related to discovery and failed to inform his clients of the filing of documents requiring action or of his lack of professional liability insurance. He scheduled a meeting intended to prepare his clients for trial two days before the scheduled trial but failed to appear for the meeting. At this point, the clients retained other counsel who entered an appearance and made a motion for continuance of the trial. However, the motion was denied, the clients were barred from presenting a defense, and the court strongly advised them to settle. The clients settled for $22,500 under pressure. Sosnowski contributed $13,000 to the settlement and $2,500 to the cost of the clients obtaining new counsel. Sosnowski also displayed a lack of diligence and failed to comply with promised actions in the disciplinary inquiry. He admitted that this conduct violated nine Rules of Professional Conduct relating to diligence, competence, and communications.
 
Sosnowski was also convicted of Driving Under the Influence at the highest level of blood alcohol testing. He was sentenced to imprisonment of three days to six months, fined $1,000, and required to pay the costs of prosecution. He failed to report this conviction to the Office of Disciplinary Counsel as required by Pa.R.D.E. 214(a). He also failed to respond to the disciplinary inquiry for nearly six months despite multiple requests for an extension.
 
Sosnowski admitted to a serious problem with alcohol and was attending two Alcoholics Anonymous meetings per day. Mitigating factors included his admission of wrongdoing, payment of a substantial portion of the cost of his misconduct to the clients, and efforts at rehabilitation. He agreed that a suspension of one year and one day was appropriate. The Supreme Court granted the joint petition for consent discipline and suspended Sosnowski for one year and one day.
 
The case of Tyler Alan Lindquist of Erie County resulted in a different outcome. Lindquist admitted to a severe pattern of neglect, failure to take required actions, and misrepresentations intended to conceal these failures in nine cases. As a mitigating factor, he provided psychiatric testimony indicating that, during the time of his misconduct, he was suffering from depression and anxiety and, while in solo private practice, was unable to afford medical treatment or medications. He left private practice and took full-time employment as an assistant public defender, an employment situation in which he has medical insurance coverage and is taking needed medication. He agreed that his actions warranted suspension but offered a plan for probation under the supervision of the Chief Public Defender as a practice monitor. The parties agreed that he should receive a disposition of suspension for one year and one day, stayed in full, with probation for a period of two years with the Chief Public Defender as his practice monitor. The terms of his probation require him to continue his ongoing mental health treatment, including taking prescribed medication as recommended by his health care provider(s). A three-member panel of the Disciplinary Board recommended this resolution to the Supreme Court, and the Court granted the joint petition for consent discipline by order dated December 30, 2025.
 
Some readers may wonder why the disposition of a suspension for one year and one day is often imposed in such situations. This interval is derived from Rule 218(a) of the Pennsylvania Rules of Disciplinary Enforcement, regarding reinstatement. The rule provides that an attorney who has been suspended for “a period exceeding one year” may not resume practice until reinstated by order of the Supreme Court which requires the attorney to file a petition for reinstatement and demonstrate current fitness to practice law in a reinstatement hearing. A suspension for one year and one day is thus the minimum suspension which will require the attorney to prove fitness before resuming the practice of law.
 

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Lawyer Who Once Represented Home Depot Barred from Suing It
 
A Federal court in California has disqualified a lawyer from representing the plaintiffs in a personal injury suit against hardware giant Home Depot, based on a finding that she had represented the company in similar lawsuits while with a different law firm more than a decade ago.
 
Judge John A. Mendez of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California issued an Order Granting Motion to Disqualify Counsel on December 2, 2025, disqualifying attorney Michele Meyers and her firm, Singleton Schreiber, LLP, from representing plaintiff Joshua Ryan in a case against Home Depot alleging that he suffered injuries from a defective skid-steer loader that he had rented from Home Depot. The case was initially filed by another attorney, but that counsel engaged several attorneys in the Singleton firm, including Meyers, as co-counsel in the case.
 
The Court noted that motions to disqualify counsel are “strongly disfavored” and that the motion raised an issue of a conflict involving successive representation under California Rule of Professional Conduct 1.9(a) which requires a showing of a substantial relationship between the subject matter of the past and current representation. The record reflected that, between 2011 and 2014, Meyers, who was then with a different law firm, was part of a small team of lawyers that represented Home Depot in over one hundred personal injury cases, many of which involved similar though not identical facts and theories. The Court found that she had received confidential information in this capacity which could be relevant to the representation of her current client. The Court noted that Home Depot does not have the burden of showing what confidential information was disclosed. Meyer argued that the information she had received was general and not relevant to the case before the court, but Judge Lopez concluded that Home Depot had met its burden of proving a substantial relationship of subject matter and that Meyer must be disqualified under Rule 1.9(a).
 
Judge Lopez then addressed the question of whether her firm was also vicariously disqualified from the representation. He noted that, once an attorney’s personal conflict of interest is established, the burden shifts to the firm to show that it has screened the disqualified attorney from participation in the case or sharing any confidential information with the attorneys handling the matter. Since the Singleton firm had not provided any procedures for screening Meyers from the case and had, in fact, included her on its litigation team, Judge Lopez held that the firm must be disqualified as well.
 

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“Vampire Law” and “Vibe Coding”: Legal Lexicographer Finds New Words in Legal Vocabulary
 
Each year, William Burton, author of Burton’s Legal Thesaurus, issues a list of new terms that have come into use in legal circles. His list for 2025 includes the following terms you may (or may not) want to add to your working vocabulary.

• “Vampire law” arises in discussion of gun control and rights and refers to laws that seek to regulate the ownership and possession of weapons on private property.
• “Vibe coding” refers to programming routines that allow users to use natural language prompts and artificial intelligence to write their own code (What could possibly go wrong?).
• “Cog war,” short for cognitive warfare, describes the act of using false or misleading information to manipulate a foreign adversary.
• “Dark patterns” are deceptive designs used online to manipulate consumers into certain actions.
• “Algorithmic wage discrimination” is the act of paying individual workers, such as gig workers, different hourly wages for similar work, often calculated using digital data relating to worker location, worker behavior, and other factors.
• “AI personhood” is the concept of granting legal rights or status to advanced AI systems.
• “Day One rights” refers to the concept that employees’ rights begin on their first day of work and that employers must notify employees of their rights and benefits on their first day of a new job. 

The times, they are a-changin', and so is the language.
 

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New York Lawyer Sues the IRS, Demanding It Recognize Pets as Legal Dependents
 
We Americans love our pets, and many of us consider them family members. A New York lawyer wants that taken literally as a matter of law. She has sued the IRS, demanding that her Golden Retriever be declared a legal dependent for tax purposes.
 
Amanda Reynolds, an attorney licensed in New York and Utah who focuses largely on civil litigation insurance defense, recently filed a complaint in the Eastern District of New York, together with Finnegan Mary Reynolds. Finnegan, it turns out, is her eight-year-old Golden Retriever. Reynolds argues that Finnegan is entirely dependent on her for food, shelter, medical care, training, transportation, and daily living. Finnegan has no independent income, resides exclusively with her, and has annual expenses exceeding $5,000. Reynolds argues that Finnegan meets every meaningful element of dependency recognized under section 152 of the Internal Revenue Code. She contends that companion dogs have care responsibilities that mirror, and sometimes surpass, those of human dependents. Noting that the IRS does provide tax advantages for some service dogs, she argues that companion dogs provide much the same support to their owners, and that the distinction between them is arbitrary and lacks a rational basis.

Getting past the leap of logic that equates a companion animal with a human child, as defined in Section 152(f)(1), we note that the eligibility of a child not a full-time student is limited to the age of eighteen or less. This raises for us the question: Is that in human years or dog years?

(A useful chart for understanding the difference between service, therapy, and emotional support dogs is found here.)
 

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British Barrister Who Wrote a Novel About an Ethically Challenged Barrister Is Disbarred
 
A British barrister, formerly a prosecutor for the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), who wrote a novel about a barrister with the CPS whose “reckless behaviour was irresistibly good fun," found that life sometimes imitates art, when he himself was disbarred.
 
Ravi Sidhu drew on his own experiences as a prosecutor to write Call This Justice, a complicated tale (lasting 490 pages) about a prosecutor’s conflicting loyalties and casual relationship with professional ethics.
 
Alas, Sidhu ran into trouble for creating a different kind of fiction. An independent disciplinary tribunal considering charges brought by the Bar Standards Board found that he was instructed to act for a client through chambers. He issued five invoices on chambers’ letterhead outside the chambers system that directed fees be paid into a personal account, dishonestly created the misleading impression that the matter was being conducted through chambers, and avoided his financial obligations to chambers. Although he argued that the billings were an innocent mistake, the tribunal concluded that his “motivation … was to avoid paying chambers’ money in relation to fees received” and his “intention [was] to benefit financially from the work he had undertaken.” The panel found that this conduct gave the client a false impression that her case was conducted under official business when it was not. In light of the aggravating factor that the client was a vulnerable person who had recently been bereaved, the tribunal concluded that disbarment was the appropriate sanction.
 
Perhaps Sidhu could fall back on a career as a novelist specializing in literary legal fiction.

Attorney Well-Being

 

 

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