Another legal blow has been dealt to Youngstown over a wrongful death that occurred in 2019.

The Seventh Appellate District in Mahoning County has denied the city's appeal to a motion granting U.S. Specialty Insurance Co.'s summary judgement request last year.

In Judge John R. Adams original 16-page decision granting the motion, he lambasted the city and its former law director, Jeff Limbian, saying they exhibited "extreme incompetence in litigating the case."

The case is over an insurance claim filed by the city with U.S. Specialty, its insurance company, following an incident where a tree on city property fell and struck motorcyclist Thomas Morar on June 17, 2017.

Initially, the city claimed it was immune from liability in this matter after Morar's attorney told the city of his injuries and asked if they were insured.

A little under two years later in April of 2019, Morar died, which lead to a wrongful death lawsuit filed on behalf of Morar's estate by its executor, Cheryl Durig. The suit sought to recover $5 million from the city.

However, a few days before the trial was set to begin, the city's insurance company filed its own lawsuit against the city claiming the insurance claim in the incident was invalid because the city did not notify the company about the incident in a timely manner.

In the court's judgement siding with the insurance company, it states the city waited nearly five years to alert Specialty of the incident, only doing so after outside counsel was brought in to litigate the underlying case and after Morar's estate said it would be seeking $5 million in the judgement.

The city did not tell Specialty about the incident until 2022, years after both the initial incident and the death of Morar, according to court documents.

In its defense, the city claims that it did not inform Specialty of the incident because it deemed at the time it was not liable for Morar's injury or death.

However, the ruling in 2023 denies this defense saying the city failed to give a timely notice here and the "unexcused significant delay" was unreasonable as a matter of law.

In its appeal, the city said the court failed to consider whether it was required to amend its answer to specifically assert immunity given a pleaded failure to state a claim defense.

However, the court rejects this claim by saying that while it did consider this argument, it considered two other cases that found that pleading the defense of failure to state a claim was not sufficient to impliedly raise the defense of immunity. 

"Thus the city simply disagrees with our finding on this issue," the court's decision states. "It has  not raised an obvious error, nor has it raised an issue for our consideration that was either not at all or was not fully considered by us when it should have been."

You can read the Appellate Court's decision here:

 

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