of improperly concealing a conflict of interest when he rendered a $3.5 million defamation judgment against the paper, and it moved to have the case reopened. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court appointed Lehigh County President Judge William H. Platt to conduct hearings into the matter. After two days of testimony that July, Judge Platt recommended that the verdict be vacated and a new trial be conducted. His recommendation was partially based on the fact that Ciavarella admitted that he wrongly presided over cases involving clients of Robert J. Powell, an attorney who paid Ciavarella and Conahan more than $770,000 in kickbacks. In June 2009, attorneys from Laputka, Bayless, Ecker & Cohn, a Hazleton law firm, appealed a $3.4 million legal malpractice verdict and wished to supplement the record to indicate that Ciavarella should not have presided over the case and should have recused himself because of his relationship with Powell, who was the opposing attorney. In early August 2009, the state Supreme Court ordered Luzerne County President Judge Chester Muroski to review a land dispute case that was dismissed by Ciavarella to determine if the ruling was tainted. First National Community Bank had loaned Ciavarella $848,000 and Conahan sat on the bank's board of directors. Ciavarella dismissed a lawsuit by Emil Malinowski against the bank, a ruling which was upheld by the state Superior Court. Dr. Ki Bum Lee, M.D. requested that a malpractice suit against him by Debra Sharkey be dropped. In court papers filed in early September 2009, Dr. Lee's attorney, Michael Badowski, said Dr. Lee should also be awarded damages after information surfaced regarding Ciavarella, William Sharkey, the former court administrator, and Sharkey's attorney, Robert Powell. Badowski alleged that Sharkey's first cousin and Ciavarella's co-defendant, Judge Michael Conahan, assigned Ciavarella to the malpractice case and that, because of the conflict of interest, Ciavarella had continually ruled against the doctor. The lawsuit, originally filed in October 1997, claimed Lee committed malpractice during Debra Sharkey's hysterectomy. Judge Thomas L. Ambro of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ruled, in March 2019, that Mark Ciavarella is not entitled to a new trial which would have followed the precedent set by the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2016 ruling in McDonnell v. United States. McDonnell v. United States altered the definition of 'official acts' as they relate to bribery. In his opinion, Judge Ambro stated that "Ciavarella’s bribery-related actions still satisfy