Service
Government Liability and Civil Rights Defense
Montgomery McCracken’s Government Liability and Civil Rights Defense Practice has earned a reputation among government officials, self-insureds, and insurance professionals for delivering first rate, cost-effective, and practical legal representation ranging from high-profile, cutting-edge matters to the more typical, yet equally important, claim.
We have successfully defended thousands of governmental liability claims for state and local public entities, as well as public agencies and officials in federal and state court and before administrative agencies including:
- Police and law enforcement agency claims
- Prisons, police holding facilities, and detention centers matters
- Zoning and land use disputes
- First Amendment and defamation claims
- Wrongful prosecution claims against prosecutors and ineffective representation claims against defense counsel
- Claims against Children and Youth Services, social workers, and Family Court
- Suits against elected officials, administrators, officers, and judges
- School based claims
- Municipal tort claims
We are proud of our trial record having successfully obtained defense verdicts in numerous cases. We have achieved dismissal via voluntary dismissals, motions to dismiss, and summary judgment in hundreds more. Further, while many claims should be aggressively defended through dismissal or trial, we recognize and identify early those problematic cases in which settlement should be considered and target them for a cost-effective, creative, and reasonable resolution.
Our prominence in the field is recognized by others as we are often asked to speak at state and national civil rights conferences and have been specially retained to handle a number of high-profile and complex matters outside of our usual geographic area ranging from western Pennsylvania to Connecticut to Virginia.
Among our successes and accomplishments are the following:
- Pre-trial dismissal or defense verdicts in over 20 police related shootings
- Dismissal of multi-million dollar demand for alleged wrongful conviction of man jailed for over 20 years for a rape/murder that later DNA testing established he did not commit
- Summary judgment in three separate ‘state-created danger’ claims
- Summary judgment in three employment related claims in the span of one week
- Spoken extensively regarding civil rights, municipal liability, and trial practice at over a hundred seminars and conferences including the Defense Research Institute, County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania League of Cities and Municipalities, Pennsylvania Township Supervisors Association, Pennsylvania Chiefs of Police Association, Pennsylvania Sheriffs Association and Pennsylvania Bar Association
Through procedures that are rigorously enforced by a system of review, we offer our clients the assurance that every file assigned to every lawyer is handled in compliance with applicable reporting requirements and is defended in accordance with a specific plan authorized by the public entity or insurance carrier.
The Government Liability and Civil Rights Defense Practice stands ready to assist and defend government entities and their officials in the vast array of claims that are asserted against them, provide pre-litigation counseling, review of policies and practices, assessment of potential claims, and conduct internal training and seminars.