One of the best-known and politically active claimants' law firms in Pennsylvania is in the news again, this time for allegedly pulling strings with state officials to get a less-than-friendly administrative law judge fired from her job, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported today.

Andrea McCormick
(Philadelphia Bar Assoc.)

Attorneys with the Philadelphia firm of Pond Lehocky Stern Giordano last year told a member of Gov. Tom Wolf's cabinet that Judge Andrea McCormick was romantically involved with an insurance defense attorney, the newspaper reported. State investigators then went through years of the judge's emails and found that she may have shared court decisions before they were officially posted, among other allegations.

Three months later, McCormick was fired.

McCormick has appealed her firing to the State Civil Service Commission.

David Stern, a partner at Pond Lehocky, told the Inquirer that lawyers at the firm had forwarded complaints in the hopes that officials would look into McCormick’s conduct “as a whole.”

“We never asked for anyone to be terminated,” he said in an email this week.

Pond Lehocky has become the target of much scrutiny by the Pennsylvania news media, and insurance and business groups in recent years, partly because members of the firm owned an interest in a compounding pharmacy. The pharmacy has charged more than $4,000 for a tube of compounded pain cream prescribed for injured workers and was billed to compensation insurance carriers, according to news reports.

The Pond lawyers have divested their interest in the pharmacy, attorneys there have said.

The firm's concerns about McCormick go back a few years. Partner Steven Pond sent emails in 2017 to Michael Vovakes, deputy secretary of Labor and Industry, arguing that the judge was siding with employers and insurance carriers on every claims dispute.

State officials examined McCormick's decisions and found no evidence of bias, the newspaper reported.

In June of last year, the firm changed its approach and told Labor Secretary Gerald Oleksiak that McCormick was dating insurance attorney Ted Carpenter Jr. McCormick acknowledged the relationship but said she recused herself from any cases involving Carpenter's firm, starting in 2015.

State investigators went back further, though, and found examples of McCormick making personal purchases online at her office and sharing photos and court decisions, the newspaper reports said. The executive deputy secretary of Labor and Industry testified at McCormick's appeal hearing in February that he felt compelled to terminate her late last year.

Other workers' compensation judges are now wondering if they'll face similar scrutiny if their decisions appear to run afoul of powerful claimants' firms.

“There’s a feeling that law firms can get judges fired,” a person close to workers’ comp judges told the Inquirer. “There’s definitely a feeling this has a chilling effect on other judges.”