The Bridgeport law firm of Koskoff, Koskoff and Bieder, which accounts for many of Connecticut’s high-profile settlements against doctors and other defendants, isn’t shy about throwing its political weight around in Hartford. Consider what happened after the firm got hit with a legal-malpractice suit from a former client, a widow who allegedly hadn’t been properly advised by attorney Rosalind Koskoff to file for workers’-comp benefits for her late husband, and was later ruled to have waited too long. As the widow’s malpractice suit against the law firm headed toward trial, two friends of the trial bar in the state senate, deputy majority leader Andrew McDonald and Sen. Edith Prague, tacked onto an unrelated bill an amendment which would have the state fork over the benefits the widow was suing for — not as a general rule, just in that one case — which would have the probable effect of knocking out the malpractice case by mootness. The bill became law, and the influential law firm can now presumably breathe a bit easier, glad it has cultivated so many friends in high political places. (Meir Rinde, “A Legislative Rat? The Koskoff Clause”, Hartford Advocate, Aug. 4).
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