Lane R. Jubb Jr.

Lane R. Jubb Jr. tried the case for Robert Kimble and his wife’s estate in the Chester County Court of Common Pleas in March 2018. The jury heard that the center had sent her to the hotel with a significant amount of anesthetic still in her body and told her to take more pain medication. The defendants maintained that they had treated her properly, and their anesthesiology expert testified that her husband should have watched her more closely and called for help.

On March 28, 2018, after less than ninety minutes of deliberation, the jury found the surgical center and the anesthesiologist negligent, assigned sixty-five percent of the responsibility to the center and thirty-five percent to the physician, and awarded $10 million for wrongful death, to which the court added delay damages. Afterward Jubb called the center’s treatment “a production line” and said the jurors had been offended by the effort to blame Robert Kimble. “Blaming the husband for failing to pay close attention to his wife in the hotel and suggesting that she would be alive was offensive to logic, since it was their position that she could have been discharged in that state anyway,” he said.

The defendants appealed, and Jubb defended the judgment. In September 2021 the Superior Court, sitting en banc, affirmed it. The court held that the center had waived its objection to the verdict slip and most of its arguments for judgment in its favor, and that a $10 million award for the loss of a wife’s society and comfort did not require a new trial. The decision, reported at 264 A.3d 782, is cited today for the rule that an objection to a verdict slip must be made at trial or is lost.

Five Days after Gallbladder Surgery

Janette Lambert was forty-nine when Dr. Mark J. Kaplan removed her gallbladder at Albert Einstein Medical Center in Philadelphia on July 22, 2014. She went from the operation to a physical therapy session and, still complaining of severe pain, was discharged the same day. She had sickle cell anemia, and no one ordered a hematology consultation. Two days later she returned in severe pain; a bile leak from the surgery was diagnosed and treated with a drain. On July 26 she stopped breathing. Clinicians resuscitated her and transferred her to intensive care. She died the next day.

Her daughter, Nicohol Ivey, administered the estate and brought the case, and Jubb, then twenty-nine, was lead trial counsel. The family contended that a sickle cell attack after the first discharge, combined with the bile peritonitis, had caused unrelenting pain, multiple organ failure, and death. Its case centered on the premature discharge: the family alleged that the hospital’s residents did not share a uniform understanding of when a patient could be discharged and that the surgeon attributed the early discharge to misinformation the residents had given him.

After a five-day trial in July 2017, the Philadelphia jury assigned ninety percent of the liability to the hospital and ten percent to the surgeon and awarded $4.6 million for wrongful death and $400,000 under the Survival Act. Afterward Jubb said that residents are held to the same standard as the attending physician and that the attending has to make sure the residents are on the same page.

Who Received Each Report

Dr. John Abraham, an orthopedic oncology surgeon, was a partner at Rothman Orthopaedic Institute with a faculty appointment at Thomas Jefferson University. On June 23, 2018, he held the gathering he gave each year at his home in Gladwyne for Jefferson’s orthopedic residents and hospital staff. Afterward a medical resident who had attended reported sexual misconduct by him, and Jefferson opened a Title IX investigation of him. Abraham would testify that he had told several Jefferson leaders that she had been the aggressor. His federal suit, filed in June 2020, alleged that his own report was never investigated and that the university had treated him differently because he was male.

Jubb and Andrew Marth of The Beasley Firm tried the case for Abraham with Stuart Bernstein and Lance Rogers. They told the jury that the Jefferson leaders who heard Abraham’s account were required to report it to the university’s Title IX office and to investigate her claims and his equally, and they put a trail of documents before it. Days after the investigation began, Abraham emailed Jefferson’s investigator and agreed to give his account. His lawyer later asked the university’s Title IX coordinator for “a short extension” until a criminal inquiry was resolved. The coordinator declined in a letter dated October 3, 2018, and Jefferson closed its investigation that month without reaching a conclusion. Montgomery County prosecutors closed the criminal inquiry in November 2018 without charges. On the third day of trial Jubb questioned the residency program director, who had talked to new residents about the resident’s allegations. “Did it ever occur to you, sir, that it would be inappropriate to relay a one-sided version of events to those residents,” Jubb asked him.

On December 7, 2023, a jury of five women and three men found Jefferson liable for sex discrimination under Title IX and for tortious interference with Abraham’s Rothman contract. On December 11, after two and a half hours of deliberation on damages, it returned $11 million in compensatory damages and $4 million in punitive damages. Jubb closed in both phases; in the damages phase he asked for an award large enough that Jefferson would acknowledge that things had to change. Afterward Abraham hugged each of his lawyers. “We’re just happy. That’s all. Happy for John,” Jubb said. The federal case ended in May 2024 with a confidential settlement of all claims.

The Word “Re-creation”

Matt Meyers was tending bar in 2013 when he began selling the comic books his uncle, a collector, had given him. He learned that graded books generally sold for more than ungraded ones and began restoring them himself with markers and ink, on the kitchen island, then the dining table, then in his parents’ basement. Emily Meyers left her job at a medical office to join him. The two came to the work from outside the hobby and were willing to experiment with techniques other restorers did not use. Some comics are printed in a pattern of dots, and paint laid over a damaged patch reads as a flat spot, so the Meyerses bought microscopes, cut half the bristles from a tiny brush, and put the dots back by hand. They mended tears with Tengucho, the Japanese tissue that is a standard archival material for restorers, and developed their own technique for repairing creases. Through Investment Grade Books they restored and traded books and submitted them to Certified Guaranty Company, which grades comic books and seals each graded book in a tamper-evident holder; collectors, dealers, and investors trust its grades to buy with confidence.

In the grading trade an extensive restoration may be called a re-creation, and a re-creation may be called a replica or even a fake; a restorer’s reputation may be damaged by passing off a re-created cover as a restoration. The Meyerses’ dealings with CGC broke down in 2015, first over grades on a Batman #1 and an Amazing Fantasy #15, then over a Detective Comics #29 that CGC’s primary grader, Matthew Nelson, suspected had been re-glossed. Matt Meyers sent the Detective Comics #29 to a metallurgical laboratory, which found no gloss on it. The couple alleged that Nelson and others at CGC then called their work fake or re-created and spread those statements through the collector market. By their account, at the 2015 San Diego Comic-Con Nelson told the managing director of Heritage Auctions that their books felt like recreations, and Heritage then told the couple it would be difficult to sell their work. A CGC grader emailed Heritage calling one of their books fake. On CGC’s own message board Nelson wrote that restoration could become so extensive that it was hard to tell what was real and what was “re-created” and impossible to represent a grade fairly to the market. After the Detective Comics #29 sold for $24,000, Nelson told its broker that the book was not worth the money, and the Meyerses returned $3,000 to the buyer. They sold restored comics below value, issued refunds to collectors, and, they alleged, were largely shut out of the hobby.

Jubb represented the Meyerses when they sued in December 2016, and he learned the business as the case went: the industry, the collectors’ preferences, and what an accusation from CGC could do to a restorer’s reputation and livelihood. He described the couple as being in “survival mode” amid the accusations. “If they tried to sell a restored banana, it would be accused of being a rubber one,” he said. In October 2019 the Superior Court held that the defamation and false-light claims belonged before a jury: a jury could treat the challenged statements as defamatory, and evidence showed publication to third parties. The case was tried over five days in July 2024 before Judge Abbe Fletman of the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas. A spectator nearly fainted when one of the comic books was presented as evidence, and in closing Jubb compared the Meyerses’ standing in the hobby after the accusation to a fan at an Eagles game in a Cowboys jersey. The jury deliberated for fifty minutes and returned a unanimous verdict for the Meyerses: $5 million in compensatory damages and $5 million in punitive damages.

In November 2024 Judge Fletman denied the post-trial motion of CGC, its restoration affiliate Classic Collectible Services, and Nelson seeking judgment notwithstanding the verdict, a new trial, and remittitur, and the defendants later discontinued their appeal. The Meyerses returned to restoration work. By the fall of 2025 they had restored the True North Collection, close to two hundred first issues and first appearances, for a Toronto collector, and at the auction of the collection that closed in September 2025 a restored Detective Comics #27 from it sold for $520,950.

Thirty Seconds on the Radar

Memorial Day 2012 was a clear afternoon over Fauquier County, Virginia. Paul Gardella Jr., a fifty-seven-year-old flight instructor, was in a Beechcraft Bonanza giving a flight review to James Duncan, the National Transportation Safety Board’s chief medical officer. A Piper Cherokee flown by a Federal Aviation Administration inspector was practicing an instrument approach nearby and receiving air traffic control services from the Potomac Consolidated TRACON. At 4:04:08 p.m. a conflict alert for the two aircraft appeared on the controller’s display, with the Bonanza about five hundred feet below the Piper and about a mile to its east. For the next thirty-seven seconds the alert stayed on the display, and the controller issued no safety alert or traffic advisory. At 4:04:45 the aircraft collided. The Bonanza fell about two thousand feet to the ground, and both men aboard died. The Piper’s pilot made an emergency landing in a pasture.

Jim Beasley Jr. and Jubb, both pilots, tried the claim of Gardella’s widow, Joyce, and their children against the United States under the Federal Tort Claims Act before Judge Liam O’Grady in the Eastern District of Virginia. The United States argued that Gardella should have seen the Piper, and under Virginia law any negligence of his own that contributed to the collision, however slight, would have barred the claim. Beasley and Jubb prepared the case with experts and showed through expert testimony and reconstructions that Gardella had been acting prudently. Judge O’Grady found no evidence that Gardella had acted negligently in the minutes before the collision, and he found the controller negligent for deciding that a safety alert was unnecessary.

The judgment came to about $5.4 million. It awarded Joyce Gardella damages for lost income and household services and for her sorrow, mental anguish, and solace, and it awarded each of the couple’s children damages for their loss.

Night over the Mojave

At about 10:08 on the night of February 9, 2024, an Airbus EC130 B4 helicopter that Orbic Air operated as an on-demand charter flight under Part 135 of the federal aviation regulations was flying from Palm Springs toward Boulder City, Nevada. It carried Herbert Wigwe, the chief executive of Nigeria’s Access Bank; his wife, Doreen; their son, Chizi; and Abimbola Ogunbanjo, the former chairman of the Nigerian Exchange Group. Over the Mojave Desert near Halloran Springs, California, it flew into rain, snow, and low cloud. A truck driver on Interstate 15 saw the aircraft’s lights and then a fireball. The two pilots and four passengers were killed.

The National Transportation Safety Board found the probable cause to be the pilot’s decision to continue a visual-flight-rules flight into instrument meteorological conditions, which led to spatial disorientation and loss of control. It found that the company’s inadequate oversight of its safety management contributed to the crash: Orbic Air had not made sure that its pilots accurately completed and updated the flight risk analysis and logged maintenance discrepancies, or that the helicopter met Part 135 requirements before departure.

Jubb was lead trial counsel for the Wigwe family in the wrongful-death action they filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court in May 2024 against Orbic Air and its chief executive, Brady Bowers. With five aviation experts he oversaw an investigation of the family’s own alongside the Safety Board’s: an accident reconstructionist who had investigated TWA Flight 800 and United Flight 232, an engineer who had performed the structural certification of Marine One, a graduate of the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School with more than four thousand flight hours across a hundred and twenty aircraft types, a former FAA inspector who had certified Air Force One, and a mechanic with more than fifty years in aviation maintenance. The investigation found that the helicopter was certified only for flight under visual flight rules; that its radar altimeter had been reported inoperative before departure, although 14 CFR 135.160 requires an operable one and Orbic’s own operations specifications prohibited flying without it; and that the pilot in command had logged 46.2 hours in the EC130. Jubb also coordinated the case’s international client relationships.

An accident investigation and a civil action begin with the same flight. The Safety Board determines a probable cause so that the next accident can be prevented. The Wigwe family’s action had to carry those findings, and the further facts of its own investigation, into a claim for a Nigerian family’s losses against an American charter operator and its chief executive in a California court. By February 2026 the claims had settled for $11.75 million on behalf of the victims’ families.

Twelve Venues

Jubb earned a bachelor’s degree in economics at Pennsylvania State University in 2010 and his law degree at Drexel University’s Thomas R. Kline School of Law in 2014, and he joined The Beasley Firm in April 2015. His practice covers medical malpractice, catastrophic aviation accidents, defamation, Title IX, and wrongful use of civil proceedings. He is one of the three licensed pilots on the firm’s aviation team, a member of the American Board of Trial Advocates, and the Young Lawyers Division representative on the Board of Governors of the Centre County Bar Association. He has tried more than twenty cases to verdict in twelve venues. On January 1, 2024, he became co-managing member of the firm alongside Jim Beasley Jr. He said of the appointment: “I’ve had a front row seat to lessons in ownership, leadership, and humility over the last decade.”

His cases have turned on compressed intervals: the two hours between the end of Sharon Kimble’s operation and her discharge, the five days between Janette Lambert’s surgery and her death, the thirty-seven seconds between a conflict alert and a collision over Fauquier County, and one word circulated through a collector market.