Heavy Reading: Summary Judgment Recommended in Case Where Plaintiff Hit By Books He Accidentally Pulled From Shop Shelf

In the case Pidich v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., No. 3:24-CV-1848 (M.D. Pa. Oct. 28, 2025 Bloom, M.J.), the court recommended the entry of summary judgment.

According to the Opinion, the Plaintiff was reaching up to try to get a book out of a box on a top shelf.  The book was wedged in the box tightly with other books.  The Plaintiff testified that he "pulled really hard" and the Plaintiff was then hit by multiple falling books.

This all occurred in an aisle where there was a sign that directed customers to "[a]sk for assistance with items on the top shelf."  

In this matter, Federal Magistrate Judge Bloom found that the Plaintiff violated an explicit warning to ask for assistance for items on the top shelf. As such, the court found that the evidence established that the Plaintiff caused his own injuries when the item he pulled off the top shelf fell upon him.

The court additionally noted that, assuming that the item was not, in fact, on the top shelf, then the Plaintiff had no evidence to show that the Defendant had notice of an allegedly dangerous condition.

Anyone wishing to review a copy of this decision may click this LINK.

I send thanks to Attorney James Beck of the Philadelphia office of the Reed Smith law firm for bringing this case to my attention.

Source of image:  Photo by Becca Correia on www.pexels.com.

ARTICLE: Preserving Confidentiality When Using AI Platforms

 The below article of written by myself and my son, Michael appeared in the January 22, 2026 edition of the Pennsylvania Law Weekly and is republished here with permission.

Michael is a Computer Science major focusing on Artificial Intelligence studies at Ursinus College outside of Philadelphia, PA. He provided the insight on the computer science aspects of the article and I focused on the legal points included in the article.

Expert Opinion/Legal Ethics and Attorney Discipline

Preserving Confidentiality When Using AI Platforms

By

Daniel E. Cummins & Michael J. Cummins

As the use of artificial intelligence (AI) rises in the practice of law, so does the concern for preserving confidentiality. Whether it be preserving one’s own client’s confidentiality as required by the Pennsylvania Rules of Professional Responsibility, or preserving the confidentiality of records related to an opposing party under the requirements of HIPAA, counsel must be careful.

This is particularly so with the rising trend of automation through the use of AI platforms for completing tasks such as streamlining review and summarization of documents, including medical records, in the practice of law. In this day in age, lawyers can upload documents to an AI platform and have the platform review the records and create a summary of the same. In fact, some insurance carriers are beginning to mandate that their defense counsel do so. This practice raises ethical and confidentiality concerns.

The Requirement of Confidentiality

Under Pennsylvania Rule of Professional Conduct 1.6, attorneys are required to protect the confidentiality of certain information that they are handling. Under Rule 1.6, titled “Confidentiality of Information,” it is provided, in pertinent part, that “a lawyer shall not reveal information relating to the representation of a client unless the client gives informed consent, except for disclosures that are impliedly authorized in order to carry out the representation … .”

The commentary to the rule notes that the rule of confidentiality “contributes to the trust that is the hallmark of the client-lawyer relationship.” With confidentiality, a client is encouraged to communicate fully and frankly with the lawyer on the subject matter of the representation. The rule also emphasizes that the lawyer may not disclose confidential information provided to the lawyer by the client except as authorized or required by the Rules of Professional Conduct or some other pertinent law.

As such, utilizing an AI platform that results in the inadvertent disclosure of a client’s private information could land an attorney in hot water with an unforgiving Disciplinary Board.


HIPAA Violations and Enforcement

In addition to attorneys needing to protect the private information of their own clients, lawyers also have to be careful with the confidential information of opposing parties, such as medical records of an opposing party.

HIPAA requires both physical and digital safeguards for patient data. In addition to mandating that medical files should not be left unattended in public areas, the law also requires that private health information must be stored digitally in a secured fashion that prevents unauthorized viewing.

The requirement of keeping an opposing party’s medical records private is mandated by HIPAA. Under the relevant law, failure to comply with HIPAA can result in civil and criminal penalties.

If a HIPAA complaint describes an action that could be a violation of the criminal provisions of HIPAA, the office for civil rights under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services may refer the complaint to the Department of Justice for an investigation.

Criminal charges typically only arise where an individual “knowingly” obtains and/or discloses individually identifiable confidential health information. The question of whether such criminal penalties could be extended to lawyers handling medical records in a civil litigation matter is subject to dispute. The HIPAA law appears to limit criminal penalties to certain entities within the health care field. Yet, HIPAA also covers third parties that handle private health information on behalf of covered entities, including law firms assisting with medical-related legal matters.

In terms of any noncompliance that may result in the imposition of civil money penalties, the Secretary of the Health and Human Services Department has the discretion in determining the amount of the penalty based upon the nature and extent of the violation and the nature and the extent of the harm resulting from the violation. Civil penalties can range from $100 to $50,000 per violation, with additional penalties for repeat violations.

Based upon the stiff HIPAA penalties that can result from violating client confidentiality or the privacy of third parties, attorneys must be very careful in the use of artificial intelligence when using such platforms to review and summarize medical records and other private information that may arise in a civil litigation matter.


Local AI versus Third-Party AI

When utilizing an AI chatbot, such as Chat-GPT or Google’s Gemini, it may appear that it is entirely personalized and private to yourself. In reality, when utilizing any form of cloud based large-language models (LLM), there is a high risk that the company that provides the model will save, maintain, and even train future models based upon the data the user inputs.

In other words, if you provide a document for Chat-GPT to summarize or prompt a question, you are giving permission for OpenAI, the company that developed and owns Chat-GPT, to save and use that document or question for future training purposes. In addition to utilizing the information or documentation to train the model, this also leaves your documents vulnerable in the case of a data breach of the model provider.

However, this does not mean that this technology is completely useless. If you want to utilize an AI tool without the potential data security risks, you can locally host one within your organization.


How to Create Your Own Safe AI Platform

Using a designated device or server, you can download a model (there are free or pay-to-use options), design an interface for your organization, and run the model locally.

Once the model is running within your network, it will not even require an internet connection, meaning that all data and documents provided to the model will remain safely within your control within your office.

In order to take advantage of such a strategy, a law firm would likely need to hire an AI consultant company or professional to set up, design, and secure the system within one’s own office. There are also options to enter enterprise agreements with companies like OpenAI to establish a business relationship which does not allow them to retain the user input and data for training purposes.


Conclusion

While the use of AI platforms to automate certain tasks in a law office, such as the review and summarization of medical records, provides certain challenges, those challenges are not insurmountable.

Certain vendors who subpoena medical records for law firms have begun to provide AI generated summaries of medical records. Steps should be taken by law firms to ensure that these vendors are utilizing closed AI platforms that protect the confidentiality of the documents.

For those law firms that wish to begin to utilize AI platforms in-house, IT professionals can be retained to assist those firms in creating AI programs that prevent the information being handled from being disclosed outside of the office.

Daniel E. Cummins is the managing attorney at Cummins Law where he focuses his practice on motor vehicle and trucking liability cases, products liability matters, and premises liability cases. He also serves as a mediator for the Federal Middle District Court and for Cummins Mediation. He is additionally the sole creator and writer of the Tort Talk Blog at www.TortTalk.com. 

Michael Cummins, Daniel's son, is a computer science and philosophy major at Ursinus College with a focus on researching artificial intelligence.




Reprinted with permission from the January 22, 2026 edition of the "The Pennsylvania Law Weekly © 2026 ALM Global Properties, LLC. All rights reserved. Further duplication without permission is prohibited, contact 877-256-2472 or asset-and-logo-licensing@alm.com.

Federal Court Addresses Liability of Both Renters of Vehicles and Out-of-Possession Landlords Under Dram Shop Act

In the case of Stopko v. Cobbs, No. 2:25-CV-00074-CB (W.D. Pa. Dec. 31, 2025 Bissoon, J.), the court addressed the issue of the liability of renters of cars and issues surrounding the Dram Shop statute.

According to the Opinion, the Plaintiff alleged that the Defendant rented a vehicle from a Co-Defendant company. T

The Plaintiff alleged that the Co-Defendant company did not perform any background check on the Defendant driver or review the Defendant driver’s driver’s history before renting him the vehicle. The Plaintiff alleged that, if the rental company had done so, they would have discovered that the Defendant driver should not have been entrusted with the rental vehicle.

The Plaintiff further alleged that, on the date of the accident, the Defendant driver went to a bar where he was allegedly served alcohol, including allegedly being served after he was allegedly visibly intoxicated.

The Plaintiff alleged that the Defendant driver then got into the vehicle that he had rented from the rental company and drove it, while intoxicated, the wrong way on the roadway, colliding in a head-on fashion with the Plaintiff.

In this decision, the court was addressing Motions to Dismiss filed by the Defendants with respect to allegations of negligence against the rental car company and with respect to the Defendant owners of the bar where the Defendant driver was drinking on the night of the accident.

The court granted the rental car company’s Motion to Dismiss after finding that the Plaintiff’s allegations were both factually and legally insufficient to state a claim upon which relief may be granted.

The court noted that the Plaintiff’s entire theory of liability rested on the allegation that the rental car company should have performed a background check on the Defendant driver or investigated his driver’s history before renting him the vehicle. The Plaintiff alleged that, due to these failures, the Defendant rental car company was negligent in entrusting the driver with the vehicle.

The court found that the Plaintiff had only pled conclusory statements regarding the Defendant driver’s driver’s history in support of these allegations. The court noted that no facts regarding the actual driver’s history appeared anywhere in the Complaint. The court held that, without more, the Plaintiff had failed to plead sufficient facts to support the claim stated.

The court otherwise noted that lessors of vehicles are not liable for a lessee’s negligent driving, unless the lessor was negligent in leasing or renting the vehicle to a person they had reason to know was incompetent to drive the vehicle. 

The court also noted that there was no basis under Pennsylvania law to interpret this standard to impose a duty on rental car companies to investigate a driver’s history before renting a vehicle to them.

The court also noted that other Pennsylvania courts have only considered lessors liable for the harm caused by a lessee’s intoxicated driving when the lessee was intoxicated at the time the vehicle was entrusted to the driver, or where the lessor had reason to know that the driver would later drink and drive. Such was not the case under the facts presented in this matter.

The court noted that, where lessees or drivers unexpectedly become intoxicated later unbeknownst to the lessor or owner of the vehicle, other courts had found that the owners and/or lessors are not liable for the injuries caused by the driver.

Relative to the separate claims against the liquor license holder for the bar and the owner of the bar, the court found that there was no basis in Pennsylvania law to support and argument by the Plaintiff that there is a duty on such Defendants, that is, bars and taverns, to prevent visibly intoxicated patrons from leaving the establishment without safe transportation, to offer alternative transportation, or to contact friends or family of the intoxicated customer. 

This court noted that there was no Pennsylvania or federal appellate court decisions in the Third Circuit that appeared to have directly addressed this issue. However, the court pointed to an unreported Eastern District court decision in which that court found that there was no basis in Pennsylvania law to impose a duty on an alcohol licensee or its agents to prevent an intoxicated patron from operating a motor vehicle.

Relative to the separate argument by the Defendants that all of the Plaintiff’s common law negligence claims should be dismissed because the Pennsylvania Dram Shop Act restricts liability for liquor licensees only to those duties imposed by the Act, the court stated that there was a lack of consensus among the Pennsylvania courts on the exclusivity of the Act. As such, this court attempted to anticipate how the Pennsylvania Supreme Court would rule if faced with this issue.

In the end, this court noted that the Dram Shop Act imposes a statutorily created duty on liquor licensees not to sell alcohol to visibly intoxicated customers and that the breach of such a duty constitutes negligence per say under the Act. This court noted that, once this duty is breached, “it does not stand to reason that [the Dram Shop Act] should shield licensees from all derivative common law liability for their actions in breaching it, including the negligent supervision that led to the breach.” See Op. at 12. Accordingly, the court allowed the Plaintiff’s common law negligence claim to proceed.

This court otherwise ruled that there was support under Pennsylvania law to also allow a claim against a landlord to go forward under an allegation that the landlord may be liable for injuries caused by their tenants’ intoxicated business invitees when the landlord knew, at the time of the lease, that the tenant would sell alcohol on the property, and later, that tenant was doing so improperly. As such, the court in this case allowed the claims against the landlord Defendant to proceed.

Anyone wishing to review a copy of this decision may click this LINK.


I send thanks to Attorney Joseph Hudock of the Pittsburgh office of the law firm of Summers McDonnell Hudock Guthrie & Rauch P.C. for bringing this case to my attention.

Source of image:  Photo by Brett Jordan on www.pexels.com.

Premises Liability Plaintiff Tripped Up By Lack of Medical Expert

In the case of Montanez-Fontanez v. Lehigh Valley Health Network, No. 2023-C-0880 (C.P. Lehigh Co. Oct. 16, 2025 Reichley, J.), the court granted summary judgment due to a Plaintiff’s failure to produce expert evidence on the issue of causation with respect to the Plaintiff’s injuries that resulted from a fall down event.

In this matter, the Plaintiff was attending a physical therapy appointment to undergo therapy for her knee which had undergone a replacement surgery a month before.  As the Plaintiff was leaving the facility, she fell.

During the course of the matter, the defense filed a motion in limine and secured a Court Order holding that the Plaintiff's treating medical providers would be limited to the opinions noted in their office notes and were precluded from offering any opinions on causation.

The defense then followed up with a Motion for Summary Judgment on the grounds that the Plaintiff had not secured and produced an expert opinion on the causation of her alleged injuries.   

The Court noted that, while the Plaintiff’s injuries were immediate and of the type that could be expected to result from the nature of the alleged accident, the Plaintiff’s failure to produce expert causation evidence was still fatal. The Court ruled that, in this matter, unlike other cases that hold that causation may be sufficiently obvious such that no expert testimony is necessary, this Plaintiff was not in good health and had prior medical issues with regards to the same parts of her body before the subject incident.

As such, the Court noted that the facts in this matter that surrounded the Plaintiff’s injuries were not so apparent that a lay person on a jury could diagnose the cause of those injuries as being solely from the Plaintiff’s alleged incident.

Anyone wishing to review a copy of this decision may click this LINK.

I send thanks to Attorney James Beck of the Philadelphia office of the Reed Smith law firm for bringing this case to my attention.

Source of imaging: Photo by Online Marketing on www.unsplash.com.

Application of Sidewalk Exception to Governmental Immunity Statute Defeats Summary Judgment Motion

Jim Thorpe, PA

In the case of Hontz v. McFarland, No. 22-CV-2524 (C.P. Carbon Co. Dec. 5, 2025 Matika, J.), the trial court denied a Motion for Summary Judgment filed by the Borough of Jim Thorpe after determining that the Borough was not immune from liability under the Political Subdivision Tort Claims Act.

According to the Opinion, the Plaintiff tripped and fell over the base of a broken pole that was affixed to a sidewalk. Two days prior to the Plaintiff’s trip and fall, there was a motor vehicle accident during which a vehicle collided with the metal pole and broke it. This left a base of the sign protruding out of the sidewalk surface by 5-6 inches. 

In response to the Motion for Summary Judgment, the Plaintiff asserted that it was permitted to proceed against the Borough under the sidewalk exception to the Political Subdivision Tort Claims Act. That exception is found at 42 Pa. C.S.A. §8542(b)(7).

Here, the court found that the Borough was not permitted to raise the defense of governmental immunity where the dangerous condition at issue was “of” the sidewalk where the defect was caused by the Borough’s failure after due notice to properly maintain or to repair the defect in question.

As such, the court denied the Borough’s Motion for Summary Judgment.

Anyone wishing to review a copy of this decision may click this LINK.

Source: “The Legal Intelligencer Common Pleas Case Alert” www.Law.com (Jan. 21, 2026).

Source of image:  Photo by Mariya E. on www.pexels.com.

Golden Gavel Award for Mock Trial Coaching

This past weekend my wife, Anne, and I were honored to have recieved an unexpected award at the Ben Franklin Invitational Mock Trial Tournament at UPENN in Philadelphia where we were presented with the Golden Gavel Award.  The Award recognizes outstanding mock trial coaching and dedication to the program.

We thank our student team members for nominating us for this Award.

Anne and I have been working with the Abington Heights High School Mock Trial Team from Clarks Summit, PA for the past decade as our three sons worked their way through the high school and participated on the Mock Trial Team.  Our youngest son is currently on the team and will graduate next year.  

Over the past decade, the excellent students who have made up the Abington Heights High School Mock Trial Teams have one three State Championships and the only National Championship ever won by a High School Mock Trial Team from Pennsylvania in the 40 year history of the competition.

Anne and I truly believe that the high school mock trial competition put on by the Pennsylvania Bar Association changes the students' lives and teaches them skills that will help them for the rest of their lives (reading and writing analytical skills, public speaking, thinking on their feet) and also helps to greatly improve their self-confidence.

Please consider being a part of this competition by volunteering to be a Judge or a juror at a competition near you.  The students truly appreciate when lawyers come out and fill up the jury boxes for their competitions.

PLEASE REGISTER TO VOLUNTEER AS A MOCK TRIAL JUROR