Sunday, July 3

Andreozzi, Kline & Feller Have Nothing on Shubin

Considerable evidence supports that Andrew Shubin is not a credible person, however lawyers Tom Kline, Ben Andreozzi, and Joel Feller also appear to have their own set of ethical shortcomings.   Unfortunately, the media often seeks out these lawyers (ambulance chasers) to find out the "truth" about PSU's Sandusky settlements.

By
Ray Blehar

With the news continuing to report on PSU's Sandusky settlements, rest assured the usual group of settlement attorneys, Tom Kline, Ben Andreoezzi, and Joel Feller will be featured to discuss the validity of the settlement process.  

Unfortunately, the track records of these individuals during the Sandusky case and settlement process show them to be less than forthright.

Tom Kline
One of the worst offenders, who seems to be quoted the most often by the media, is attorney Tom Kline.  He represented Victim 5 (V5), who happened to be the only victim to make an allegation (i.e., indecent assault) that resulted in a not guilty verdict.  

After the first round of settlements, Kline's client reportedly received one of the highest payments because of the date of his abuse was (allegedly) after February 2001 and purportedly could have been prevented.

In a recent article in the Washington Post, Kline said this about the settlement process:

“I’ve been intimately involved in the litigation process, and there are multiple tiers and levels of process involved in evaluating these claims.  I can tell you the claims were paid after rigorous vetting and substantiation of a claim.”

The statement couldn't be farther from the truth.

First, the settlement documents state that the claims are not considered valid or invalid.

Figure 1: Excerpt from John Doe A  Settlement Document

Next, attorney Kenneth Feinberg, who served as Penn State's settlement negotiator, more or less called the process a bargaining session.

"This is a market-driven process.  Plaintiffs will demand one thing. Defendants are willing to give another. My job is to present them with facts that can justify them meeting in the middle."

Sources with knowledge of the process stated that one of the primary objectives of the process was to get claimants to accept a payment below the insurance limits.   


As noted earlier, PSU did not consider the claims valid or invalid, but in this instance chose to make a higher payment based on the date, despite the following facts (one which bears repeating):

- V5 was unsure of the date of the incident and gave 1998, November 2000, and August 2001 as possible dates;  

- An August date would have placed he and Sandusky in the Lasch Building during pre-season football camp when the likelihood of being unseen by someone would have been very low.

- Judge Cleland stated that child victims whose abuse happened many years ago could not be held to recall the correct date, and;

V5 was the only victim to make an allegation that was flatly rejected, apparently with little discussion, by the jury.  Note that the jury found Sandusky guilty of all the crimes related to an incident that had neither an identified victim nor an eyewitness -- and was based on hearsay!

PSU's likely ulterior motive in the settlement process was to use the court of public opinion to convict Paterno, Spanier, Curley, and Schultz of endangering children.  It is little wonder that Lubert and Feinberg so easily went along with the 2001 date.

Of course, this was great news to Kline -- but it wasn't the first time that his client's false testimony was allowed to slide.


V5's Sentencing Statement
While the jury didn't buy V5's testimony of the 2001 indecent assault in the Lasch Building, Tom Kline, Judge Cleland, and the media seemingly forgot about that when he took the stand at Sandusky's sentencing hearing.

Apparently, Kline did not inform his client that his victim impact statement should be confined to crimes in which the defendant was convicted -- not those in which he was found not guilty.   

Victim 5's impact statement clearly referred the indecent assault which was not believed by the jury.   

"Jerry Sandusky lured me into a Penn State sauna and then a shower and then forcibly had me touch him. I am troubled with flashbacks of his naked body. I continue to be haunted by the incident. (I have) anxiety, PTSD, nightmares, and embarrassment and guilt.“

"I will never erase from my mind the filthy images of his naked body, him forcing himself against me and my hands against him.  He took away my childhood the day he assaulted me. He should be sentenced accordingly." 

Given that the jury found he was not assaulted, it seemingly follows that if this had been a civil trial, rather than PSU's sham settlement process, Victim 5 (and Kline) wouldn't have fared so well.  

While the burden of proof in a civil trial is much lower, any competent lawyer would have shown that there was too much uncertainty about the date of the incident to award the payout based on PSU's ability to prevent the incident.

Kline:  Laughing all the way to the bank

Kline, who recently donated $50 million to Drexel University and will have the law school named after him, was laughing all the way to the bank at how easy the money came from PSU.


And the man behind making it easy -- Ira Lubert.


Lubert: Unusual interest in Victim 5's settlement?
Interestingly enough, the final multi-millon dollar figure was decided at a meeting between Kline, Feinberg, and PSU Board of Trustees member,Ira Lubert.  

Kline's client, Victim 5, was the highest paid of the claimants until Victim 9 extracted even more money by using discovery the Freeh Report Source materials as leverage.

Speaking of money, that appeared to be Ben Andreozzi's focus since day one.  

Ben Andreozzi
On or around the time of the Sandusky trial and settlements, attorney Ben Andreozzi's law firm's name was prominently featured on the web-site of the Pennsylvania Office of Victim Advocate.  

Wasn't that convenient?

Andreozzi was one of the first out of the gate to file a lawsuit, however, it was against TSM in order to preserve assets in the case of future civil lawsuits.   Interestingly enough, Andreozzi's lawsuit faulted the charity for lack of oversight.  

Court documents asserted that TSM was reckless in its hiring, supervision and retention of Sandusky, and negligent when it did not contact law enforcement or child protective services when it learned of sexual abuse accusations.  The papers also maintained that the charity failed to properly supervise Sandusky’s one-on-one or overnight activities with the boys he came in contact with through TSM.

Seemingly, all that was forgotten and never spoken of again once Lubert, Feinberg, and friends doled out the settlement money.  

 
Andreozzi: Shifted Blame to PSU
After the settlements, Andreozzi shifted the blame to PSU, stating that PSU had been  "moving in the right direction" and that it "serves as a model for how institutions can assume some accountability after they make mistakes.”

Andreozzi's inconsistency goes right along with his (lack of) credibility -- and as the evidence reveals, he has some things in common with Andrew Shubin.

Shubin's client, A.M., in his fifth and last interview with investigators,  changed his story from being victimized during a trip with Sandusky (to Erie, PA) to his victimization occurring only in the PSU football facilities.  It was the fifth different version Shubin's client gave in five attempts.  As such,  A.M., much like his attorney, Andrew Shubin, was determined not credible by the Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General.

Victim 4 (V4), who retained Andreozzi before speaking with the police also alleged that all of the victimization occurred only in the PSU football facilities or at football related events -- not in the Sandusky home or elsewhere.     

It is almost certain that V4 was abused in the Sandusky home, just as Victims 3, 7, 9, 10, and others not presented at trial were.   However, it appears that in order to obtain the largest settlement possible, Andreozzi kept his client focused on just those crimes allegedly occurring at PSU (because it had the deepest pockets).

Joel Feller
Joel Feller is part of the Ross Feller Casey law firm that represented seven Sandusky claimants, including Victims 3, 7, and 10, as well as the person purporting to be Victim 2. 

Feller's apparent ethical lapse involves his representation of Victim 10 (V10), whose statements to PSU for the settlements in no way matched his testimony -- or the prosecution's version of his victimization -- at the trial.  Here's prosecutor Joseph McGettigan's description of V10's relationship with and victimization by Sandusky.

“…he was a less lengthy congallant (sic)…of the defendant’s but it lasted long enough for the defendant to take him downstairs, in a place he would be with children, and both perform and have oral sex with him.”

In short, McGettigan was describing a single incident that led to Sandusky being convicted on two counts of Involuntary Deviate Sexual Intercourse (IDSI).   V10's only other mention of indecent contact with Sandusky allegedly occurred one year earlier when he was groped in a swimming pool during The Second Mile's Summer Challenge camp. 

However, the Ross Feller Casey web-site included this posting shortly after the settlement:

In a segment that aired at 11 p.m. Aug. 20, Victim 10 spoke candidly to Action News' Wendy Saltzman about how Sandusky groomed him, how he lavished him with gifts and affection and became a father figure only to molest him dozens of times over three years and then threaten him.

"It occurred on the Penn State campus, it occurred in Jerry's home, in public -- anywhere that he felt he was safe to do that was where he took advantage of me." 

Said (Joel)  Feller: "These young men are living not only with the fact that they were abused horrifically over a significant period of time.”

It strains credulity that Joel Feller and the rest of the attorneys (including Andrew Shubin) involved in V10's case did not know he had dramatically changed his story from the trial to the settlement discussions.   


Feller:  Coached Victim 10 to tell more credible story?

While it is not unusual for victims to disclose more details about their victimization, V10's testimony at trial reflected the public's stereotype of child molesters, otherwise known as "stranger danger" incidents.   

According to the jury foreman, V10s case involved the most deliberations because his testimony did not reflect Sandusky's modus operandi as an acquaintance offender.

It is almost certain that V10 was coached by his legal team to provide a more credible version of events at settlement.

Conclusion
When the next round of settlement news breaks, most assuredly one of these bloodsuckers will show up to comment on the veracity of the process -- even though evidence shows that facts were of little concern to anyone involved in the settlement process.




16 comments:

  1. Wait - this statement in Snyder's article linked is patently absurd.

    "The victim, who grew up in the shadow of Beaver Stadium - so close that when a touchdown was scored, his house windows would shake"

    http://articles.philly.com/2013-08-19/news/41422837_1_jerry-sandusky-sandusky-victim-campus-shower

    So this victim grew up in the cow barns or East Halls?

    Maybe they really meant Veteran's Stadium in Philadelphia? Now that would make sense. Perhaps there's more to the story coming out of Philadelphia that we aren't being told.

    These guys can spray an $8.5 million dollar can of FREEHbreze on it, they can "handwave" all they want, but it still smells.

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    1. Maybe he and his family lived in the Lasch building and witnessed ALL of the abuse that went on there ?

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    2. Property records confirm at the time he was in contact with Sandusky he was living 3.5 miles from Beaver Stadium -- on the other side of town.

      For those familiar with State College, the home was located not far from the car dealerships near Route 26 and Whitehall Road.

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  2. Wendy,
    Let me run that down. I know the family bought a new house around 2002 or 2003. I'll get back to you.

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  3. Joe ran preseason practice with more security than Fort Knox. I doubt that any non essential person would be allowed near the place. I also remember testimony that JS was never seen on campus with a child after 2001. The fraud in these cases is so obvious that it boggles the mind that someone isn't conducting a forensic audit. Of course, the PA media have given the "victims" a license to lie....and have made themselves party to the fraud.

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    1. I agree with you. And a statement you make here, "..the media have made themselves a party to the fraud" is the key to unlocking why this rampant fraud and corruption is happening in this country. Since Donald Rumsfeld's announcement that 2.3 Trillion dollars were "missing" from the Pentagon budget, and his warning that it was a "matter of life and death", and the resulting false flag attack that followed (9/11), NOTHING from the media is the truth. We experienced a military coup d'état that day with tons of military grade nano thermite(found in the rubble) used to demolish the buildings and murder over 3000 innocent civilians. A complicit media told us it was Islam and not the corrupt factions of our own government. So, since that day, any objectives and actions of these corrupt factions of our own government must continue to be hidden by the compromised media. That is, unless they want to expose themselves as participants in the murder of over 3 thousand innocent American civilians.

      Our vulnerable children will continue to be kidnapped, raped, and sold. Our good people(Paterno, Spanier)will continue to be framed by our corrupt courts and media. And there will be no accountability until the psychopaths that pulled-off that coup d'état on 9/11 are brought to justice for their crimes against humanity. Don't look to Obama, he is cut from the same cloth that Bush was. He is a false liberal put in to continue covering-up the coup d'état.

      Some of us still can't or won't see any of this. And so we continue to live a lie while we fight all the ever-increasing small battles trying to protect our good innocent people from the organized slander of the compromised and pathological media. These little battles would not, and could not exist if we would only stop avoiding the larger truth.

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    2. I'm sorry, I apologize. But I do feel that our mainstream media is seriously compromised since the 9/11 atrocity and this is why it's relevant to their false narrative created against Joe and PSU. I thought maybe you would be open to this and see how it relates to the fact that Joe Paterno and the PSU 3 were so easily accused and ruined by the media. This should not happen in this country. Also, Louis Freeh is connected to both twin tower attacks and he is also connected to the PSU debacle. So there is more relevancy here in my comments than you may want to believe. And there are going to be many more Joe Paternos and PSUs until the bigger picture is properly addressed.

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  4. The uphill climb facing those who are searching for the truth seems insurmountable when we have to deal with unscrupulous attorneys and media that chases them down for a story. Thanks Ray for keeping the information flowing.

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    1. I too have reflected on this uphill climb that you speak of. And I have felt such hopelessness as I look at this seemingly insurmountable mountain of corruption. Most of us, the good people, keep trying to overcome this mountain. But we keep falling by the wayside as the corrupt politicians and mainstream media slanders us and our efforts. They call us "truthers" as if the word "truth" had a bad connotation. And they call us "conspiracy theorists" as if the word conspiracy is synonymous with the word "theory". The word "conspiracy" describes a real world condition that exists quite easily without it just being a theory. And so this illustrates how the corrupt ones that hold power try to mislead us with their twisted word games that hide their crimes.

      This Joe Paterno and PSU slander by the compromised media is just a microcosm of the larger 9/11 debacle. It's the same corrupt powers that be at work(see my above post). "Paterno truthers, Joebots, Second Mile conspiracy theorists, etc.", are the same slander attacks used by the corrupt 9/11 murder-accomplice media to discredit those that speak the truth. And yes the "mountain" does seem insurmountable. But I had renewed hope the other day as I came across these words spoken by Jesus Christ: Matthew 19:26 "..with men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible". We must pray every day that the hardened hearts of those that have inflicted this damage on our country will softened. Only God can do this.

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  5. Anyone else notice Risa Vetri-Ferman seems to be in hiding? Of course she's a judge now and her life isn't quite as exciting as it was. The media-manufactured celebrity DA that she was, bringing down Bill Cosby and charging her boss, the Attorney General of PA with leading a conspiracy and perjury. Wow, so exciting it's almost Hollywood! But wait, if Risa Vetri-Ferman is Kane's direct subordinate, in the real world how and why would she bring charges against her boss? And the charges are so vague and unsubstantiated it would seem that something larger than Vetri-Ferman is dictating her actions. I find Vetri-Ferman's family wealth and status to be quite interesting. And I wonder if that silver spoon is what made "celebrities" out of Risa and her two brothers, Marc and Adam. Let's see, Marc Vetri, a celebrity Italian chef in Philadelphia with lots of media time. And of course, Adam Vetri, a celebrity Hollywood producer with lots of media attention. And last but not least, their sister, the celebrity DA in PA with tons of glowing crime-busting media coverage. And of course each sibling has put their best foot forward in the media with their community oriented projects that seem to indicate they are model citizens. But wait, why would Marc Vetri need to sell his pizza chain to the highly controversial company, Urban Outfitters? Urban Outfitters is constantly in court over selling clothing with overtly socially antagonistic symbology. The Navajo Nation took them to court for using their name and artwork without permission as copyright infringement. And there are countless other examples such as this. Urban Outfitters appears to be politically and socially antagonizing the masses as they pose as a progressive clothing outlet for urban liberal-minded people. I would postulate that the Vetri siblings also have a darker agenda than the one they expose to us through our "trusted" media. I wonder if Adam Vetri has plans for a new reality show, maybe, La Cosa Nostra in Philadelphia? Or, maybe, The Zappala Crime Family in Pittsburgh? And who knows, maybe even more exciting would be The Vetri Family and their pizza chain merge with Urban Outfitters!

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    1. Amigo...Por Favor please keep your comments relevant to the PSU fiasco. If you want to be enraged about child sexual exploitation, check out what San Diego (the underground child porn capitol of the USA) has had to do with its "Ugly Truth" campaign.

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    2. You don't feel there is any relevancy to the persecution of Kathleen Kane and the persecution of Joe Paterno and the PSU 3? Risa Vetri-Ferman is corrupt, Tom Corbett is corrupt, Linda Kelly is corrupt, Frank Noonan is corrupt, Frank fina is corrupt, Seth Williams is corrupt, and on and on. They are all beholden to organized crime. I apologized to your same admonition above but you removed it and placed it on this comment.

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  6. If a victim testified there was one incident of abuse at the Sandusky trial but said there were dozens of incidents of abuse in the insurance claim, how can that not be perjury or insurance fraud?

    It will be interesting to see what the settlement documents from the insurance lawsuit reveal when they are released.

    It certainly does seem like a colossal failure of their fiduciary duty for PSU Trustees and their negotiators to give away millions for no valid reason. How many millions did the PSU negotiators rake in?

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    1. Tim,
      The problem is that the claims were not "insurance" claims, but claims as part of a mediated settlement with PSU. As I noted in the first part of the blog, Feinberg Rozen was more or less playing "let's make a deal." They weren't validating the claims.

      If Victim 10's settlement document is similar to John Doe A's, then it will state that PSU did not consider his allegations to be valid or invalid.

      PMA attempted not to pay claims (submitted by PSU) by alleging that PSU was negligent in its oversight of Sandusky. It could take a different tack and argue that it won't pay claims that have not been validated -- and force the issue. However, I don't think that rises to an insurance fraud case.

      The changing stories given to PSU aren't perjury because they weren't given in an official proceeding.

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  7. Thanks Ray.

    I would have thought the claimants would have had to give a sworn deposition, which would have been under oath.

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    1. You're welcome, Tim.

      I don't know for sure, but my best guess is that the civil attorneys in the mediation provided depositions from their clients, but these were not sworn and transcribed by a court reporter. At most, they may have had them notarized.

      I'll look into it a little further.

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