On February 26, 2015, Patrick M. St. Fleur filed a lawsuit against the City of Linden and various police and other city officials claiming wrongful arrest, excessive force, report fabrication and destruction of evidence.  The city and/or its insurer has retained five lawyers from four separate law firms to defend against the lawsuit:

a) Robert F. Varady from the Union firm of LaCorte Bundy Varady & Kinsella to represent the City of Linden, its police department and police chief.

b) Michael A. D’Anton, Sr. of the Secaucus firm of Chasan Lamparello Mallon & Cappuzzo,PC to represent municipal prosecutor Nicholas P. Scutari. (Scutari also serves as a State Senator.)

c) Robert F. Renaud and Catherine M. DeAppolonio from the Cranford firm of Palumbo Renaud & DeAppolonio to represent police officer Martin Jedrzejewski.

d) Edward J. Kologi from the Linden firm of Kologi Simitz to represent police employees Gavin Sheehan, Jason Mohr, Andrew Bara, Charles Crane and an employee whose last name is Petruski.

Even though this case is far from over–it’s still in the discovery phase–the four law firms have thus far billed the City’s insurer $139,971.21: Varady’s firm has billed $26,035.35, D’Anton’s firm has billed $42,571.77, Renaud’s and DeAppolonio’s firm has billed $37,087.50 and Kology’s firm has billed $34,276.66.  As the billing cover sheet notes, “Please note that litigation in this matter is on-going. As such, these totals are expected to increase accordingly.”

It strikes me that there should be a more efficient and less expensive way of resolving this sort of claim.

Update: St. Fleur’s case settled on April 22, 2020 for $300,000.

Chairman of the New Jersey Libertarian Party's Open Government Advocacy Project. Please send all comments to [email protected]