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Faxon Law Group: Eric P. Smith (personal injury litigation – plaintiffs, 2012) represented the family of a Naugatuck man, William Ashmore, who died after open–heart surgery when Hartford Hospital personnel failed to reconnect the wires of his pacemaker before giving him a narcotic. The day after a successful cardiac surgery, Ashmore, 68, was given a medication intended to slow his heart rate, but which slowed his heart rate to dangerously low levels. His heart monitor alarms signaled a problem, but hospital personnel didn’t connect Ashmore’s pacemaker wires to an electric charging source to restore his heartbeat to a regular rate. Falling into cardiac arrest, Ashmore was unable to receive critical blood flow and oxygen to his brain, leading to severe brain damage. After being placed on a ventilator for three days, Ashmore was removed from life support and died. The jury returned a $5.8 million verdict in favor of Ashmore and his family. Jacobs & Dow: William F. Dow III (criminal defense: general practice; criminal defense: white-collar; DUI/DWI defense, 1993) acted as defense counsel for Allison Marchese, a former Madison high school teacher who was charged with second-degree sexual assault and risk of injury to a minor after she sent risqué photos to a 15-year-old and 17-yearold student and also performed oral sex on one of the students in a locked classroom in 2014. The charges could have put Marchese in jail for up to 20 years, but a deal struck with the prosecutor allowed her to plead guilty to lesser charges. Following her pleas under the Alford doctrine, which allowed her to concede that prosecutors had sufficient evidence to convict her without admitting guilt, Marchese was sentenced to three years in prison, five years of probation, and given a protective order barring her from contacting either student for 10 years.
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Law Office of Hubert J. Santos: Hubert J. Santos (criminal defense: general practice; criminal defense: white-collar; personal injury litigation – plaintiffs, 1983) is representing Michael Skakel in his Supreme Court appeal regarding the decision to return him to prison for the murder of a teenaged neighbor in 1975 after the conviction was vacated by a lower court because Skakel’s rights had been violated by an inept defense lawyer.
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Locke Lord: Barry Kramer (copyright law; litigation – intellectual property; litigation – patent; patent law; trademark law, 1995) co-authored a survey analyzing the terms of 31 unicorn financings that closed over the course of 2016. Results from the survey showed that there was a decline in the number of U.S.-based, venture-backed unicorn financings, down from 62 in 2015 to 31 in 2016.
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ITN FEATURE
A Firefighter, a Fraternity, and a Daughter Gone too Soon
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alsh Woodard: Michael J. Walsh (mediation; personal injury litigation – plaintiffs, 2017) filed a suit for the parents of Jeffny Pally, a 19-year-old University of Connecticut student who died after being run over by a campus fire department vehicle. On October 16, Pally walked to UConn Fire Department’s facility after leaving a fraternity party with a .25 blood alcohol level. According to surveillance from that time, Pally leaned against one of the garage’s bay doors for 20 minutes. As the door opened, Pally fell backwards into the path of Dana E. Barrow Jr., a firefighter responding to an alarm at a dorm. Pally’s parents Abraham and Shiny Chemmarapally are suing Barrow and the state for negligence
and carelessness, citing that Barrow didn’t immediately stop after hitting Pally. Barrow states that he didn’t realize he had struck a person until he returned from the fire alarm call a half hour later and found her body. Walsh states his clients’ objective with the suit as the following: “It is the sincere hope of the Chemmarappallys that the investigation of this tragic event may be the first step towards the development of measures to prevent any other family from having to experience a similar tragedy." Six UConn students face charges for allowing a minor to possess alcohol in addition to other offenses for hosting an off-campus party at a house affiliated with the Kappa Sigma fraternity, which has since been suspended from campus.
Compiled by Tess Congo NOTE Lawyers listed in Best Lawyers are indicated by their selected practice area(s) in parentheses along with the first year they were included in the Best Lawyers list. To be included in next year’s In the News feature, please email us your news at: news@bestlawyers.com.
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