The Legal Intelligencer Blog

Positioning Yourself and Your Firm as a Subject-Matter Expert

By Beth Rosenfeld, Lisa Peskin and Brynne Tillman 
Special to the Legal

How much attorneys know and how good they are at what they do are key factors when clients choose whom they want to represent them. These same things are equally important when lawyers consider which colleagues they will refer business to.

One of the most effective ways to appeal to potential clients is to position yourself and your firm as a “thought leader” in your area of expertise. When one can share insights and interest in a topic, you engage others and attract them to you. There are two things to consider when taking on a subject-matter expert role. First, you must have good original content that your target reader will find interesting. Second, your audience must be composed of potential clients and referral sources.

Let’s tackle the content first with three considerations:

• Identify the things that matter to your potential clients and the attorneys who already refer business your way. Ask around. What topics in your area of expertise would draw them in? What information would be a valuable takeaway from your article?
• Keep it simple, engaging and short. You don’t have to give them all the details of the topic. If they want more, they can reach out to you.
• Invite people to take a next step. Be sure to end all your content with a “call to action.” Invite them to share their thoughts, concerns and/or perspective. They can email, call you or simply request more information on the topic.

Regardless of how great your content is, if no one reads it, there is no impact. Assuring that your information gets in front of both potential clients and referral partners is of equal importance to creating good content in your messaging.

Following are some suggestions on how to get your message in front of the right audience:

• Participate on panels and get involved in speaking engagements targeted to your potential clients and referral sources. Chambers, associations and networking groups are always looking for speakers on new topics.
• Publish articles in law reviews, journals, research guides, papers and online resources. Media channels are always looking for great content.
• Blog. Have a consistent content stream that speaks to your clients. Keep your ideas simple and offer actionable steps. The goal is for the reader to walk away thinking not only was your article an interesting read, but that it made an impact upon how the reader will think and react to relevant situations after reading your blog. When this occurs, credibility is instantly created and you become a top-of-mind thought leader. Similar to writing an article, when blogging, always include a call to action asking the reader to connect with you.
• Weekly/monthly emails can have significant power with your existing network, yet, again, keep it simple. This is a great way to share your blog, upcoming events and industry insights that your target client cares about.
• Social media, though rarely an exact science, is a very effective way to rapidly distribute your message to a large audience. Be cautious to choose your media carefully. If your prospective client is an individual and your firm focuses on estate planning, divorce, family law, medical malpractice, PI, etc., you may want to have a Facebook presence. If your expertise centers on companies or corporate law, LinkedIn is likely your best outlet. Posting to your status will keep your current connections aware, but posting your content to groups will get new eyes following your content.

The bottom line is that the more you get your message out and position yourself and your firm as a subject-matter expert, the more new cases, new clients and new referral sources will come your way.

Beth Rosenfeld, Lisa Peskin and Brynne Tillman are members of the Business Development University legal sales team.

Lawyers on the Fast Track Nomination Window Is Open

Once a year, the Pennsylvania legal community comes together to celebrate the next generation of great attorneys —The Legal Intelligencer's Lawyers on the Fast Track. But before they can be honored, they have to be nominated — by YOU!

From today through June 28, the nomination window will be open for you to nominate the most impressive Pennsylvania attorney(s) you know under the age of 40. The official nomination form is now available for download on The Legal's website, in the Hot Topics section at the top of the site, as well as by request via email to the attention of Ben Seal at [email protected].

The only parameters are the nominee must base his or her practice in Pennsylvania, and he or she cannot have received this honor in the past. Otherwise, anyone who has a completed nomination form submitted on his or her behalf may be considered.

Completed nomination forms will be evaluated by an impartial judging panel, made up of prominent members of the Pennsylvania legal community. Those nominees receiving the highest composite scores from all the panelists will be our 2013 Lawyers on the Fast Track.

The full list of honorees will be be announced in late July and profiles of them will be featured in a special supplement to The Legal, published in September. They will also be honored at a celebratory dinner in November.

Don’t let a deserving member of the profession go unrecognized — nominate them to be a Lawyer on the Fast Track.

Red Flags in the Analysis of Balance Sheets – Inventory

By Colleen S. Vallen
Special to the Legal

In recent blogs, I have been discussing red flags in financial data. Red flags are circumstances unusual in nature or deviations from customary activity. In this blog, I want to focus on one specific balance sheet item: the current asset inventory. For manufacturing and merchandising firms, inventory can be a significant balance sheet item.

Defining Inventory

In order to discuss the red flags related to inventory, it is important to understand what inventory is and how it relates to the financial statements of a business. Inventory represents goods produced or purchased for the purpose of resale. In a manufacturing situation, inventory can include raw materials, work-in-process and finished goods. Inventory in simplest terms is product a business owns but has not sold. Inventory is carried on the balance sheet at cost and is considered a current asset because it is expected to be sold in the relatively near future.

Components of Inventory

The two key components of inventory are quantity and price. While these seem to be simple concepts, the nature of inventory can cause quantity and price to be confusing. The inventory process involves purchases and sales over time. In addition, for many businesses, transfer of inventory between locations is also a regular occurrence. Depending on the accounting procedures a business utilizes, determining the goods on hand at any point in time may involve a number of procedures. For example, some companies do not track inventory movement on a transaction-by-transaction basis, but perform physical counts of inventory periodically to obtain that information.

In addition, the cost of inventory has its own complexities. Costs fluctuate over time. Further, tracking of costs, as with quantity, may not be done on a transaction-by-transaction basis, but may involve the use of accounting procedures.

Finally, inventory is connected to the balance sheet as well as the income statement. Merchandise prior to being sold is reported as inventory; however, when merchandise is sold, the cost of the items sold is reported on the income statement as “cost of goods sold.”

As a result, analyzing red flags related to inventory involves two general areas: theft of inventory and financial statement fraud involving the inventory account.

Theft of Inventory

Theft of inventory is more often than not done by an employee or group of employees and involves actual physical loss of inventory. Inventory is taken for personal use or for resale. For most businesses, the loss of inventory by employee theft is the largest component of inventory shrinkage. Inventory shrinkage includes physical loss of inventory related to a variety of events, including theft, bookkeeping errors and damage.

Examples of red flags related to inventory theft include unexplained inventory variances, missing documentation, particularly related to the receiving and shipping processes, unexplained credits and write-offs to inventory.

Those who want to defraud a company via theft of inventory often use more than one scheme when manipulating inventory. For example, they create fictitious purchase orders, alter inventory physical counts and use journal entries to artificially inflate the inventory account.

Overstatement of Inventory

Overstatement of inventory is a common financial statement fraud. To illustrate this concept, consider the income statement equation. The income statement provides information on a business’ profitability. The formula: Revenues minus expenses equals net profit or net loss. In a simple world, if expenses are lower, profitability is improved. Inventory is connected to the expense (i.e., cost of goods sold). When inventory is sold, the corresponding cost is taken as an expense on the income statement. Therefore, when ending inventory is overstated, the costs for the period are understated and result in reporting higher profit. Conversely, at times, companies may understate inventory, as there are motivations to show lower profit in a particular period.

Red flags to consider include inventory values that do not change or minimally change from period to period and gross profit percentages that remain consistent period to period.

To better understand inventory, consider comparing the inventory and cost of goods sold accounts from period to period to help identify areas of potential concern and areas that need to be considered in more detail. In addition, using ratio analysis can also help identify trends and patterns as well as variances that should be questioned and discussed.

Colleen S. Vallen is a partner in Citrin Cooperman Philadelphia’s valuation and forensic services group. An expert in the field of forensic and investigative accounting, she focuses her attention on forensic and fraud investigations, the preparation of financial damage analysis and litigation support. She is also highly experienced in the analysis, investigation and review of financial documents, as well as case planning and management, financial and economic analysis, expert report preparation, oral presentation of findings and assistance with discovery, interrogatories and depositions. She can be reached at [email protected] or 215-545-4800.

 

Aggrieved Parties and Their Right to Appeal

By James W. Cushing
Special to the Legal

The Rules of Civil Procedure are designed to facilitate litigation so it can be performed smoothly and predictably. Unfortunately, one simply cannot predict and write a rule for every possible contingency that could happen in the life of a case. There will always be circumstances that seem to fall into the cracks between the rules.

Pa.R.C.P. 1028(a)(1) requires a complaint be dismissed when the court lacks jurisdiction over the subject matter and/or the parties to a claim. Pa.R.C.P. 1028(5) requires a complaint be dismissed when a plaintiff lacks standing to file one on the issues contained therein. What if a plaintiff sues two defendants in municipal court, wins a judgment for jurisdictional limits against only one defendant but files an appeal to the court of common pleas against both parties despite having won as much as legally permitted against one of the defendants?

Although, pursuant to 42 Pa.C.S.A. §5105, a party may file an appeal from a final order, it could be argued that only an aggrieved party may file an appeal, as in Pierro v. Pierro, 434 Pa. 131 (1969). Pennsylvania case law has something to say on this subject: “Standing [to file an appeal] requires an aggrieved party, and one ‘who is not adversely affected in any way by the matter which he seeks to challenge is not ‘aggrieved’ thereby and has no standing to obtain a judicial resolution of his challenge,’” as the court held in Lisa H v. State Board of Education 67 Pa.Cmwlth. 350 (1982), quoting William Penn Parking Garage v. City of Pittsburgh, 464 Pa. 168 (1975).

If our hypothetical plaintiff above won a judgment against one of the defendants for full jurisdictional limits in municipal court, it could be argued, per the above case law, that the plaintiff is not an aggrieved party, as he won his case against the defendant as completely as possible according to his own complaint and the municipal court rules. As he is not aggrieved, it could be argued, he has no standing to file an appeal of that judgment to the court of common pleas against that defendant. If the plaintiff had no standing and, therefore, could not file an appeal of the judgment, the court of common pleas, theoretically, has no jurisdiction over the person or subject matter at issue as it pertains to that one defendant.

The statute and cases seem to point in the direction that only a truly aggrieved party can file an appeal. Unfortunately, there seems to be a conspicuous absence among the relevant cases and statutes as to precisely whether a party that completely wins its case against a party, particularly in municipal court, is actually an aggrieved party with the right to appeal. It would seem that this issue is ripe for testing in the courts as soon as the opportunity arises.

James W. Cushing is an associate at the Law Office of Faye Riva Cohen P.C., research attorney for Legal Research Inc. and sits on the board of directors of the Christian Legal Clinics of Philadelphia.

Crisis Management and Law Firms

By Gina F. Rubel
Special to the Legal

Every year, I attend the Legal Marketing Association International Conference, where more than 1,000 industry professionals converge to share thought leadership, best practices and war stories. One of the programs that I particularly enjoyed was “The Power of Critical Thinking in Communications and Crisis Leadership.”

Joshua M. Peck, senior media relations manager for Duane Morris, and Larry Kamer, president of Kamer Consulting Group, presented a products liability hypothetical. A company’s product is named in the media as having caused a child’s death. In the early stages of the crisis, a junior representative of the company’s public relations agency issues an errant and seemingly insensitive tweet that fuels a firestorm of even more negative publicity. Corporate counsel is contacted for legal assistance. The company has to decide what to do with its PR agency while in the midst of a major media crisis. The media is banging down the literal and virtual doors. Someone has to take charge of the situation. Who should be in charge? In-house counsel? The company CEO? The PR agency on retainer? A new PR agency? Corporate counsel? And once they decide who should take charge, then what should they say? What are the important issues and who are the key stakeholders?

We split into small groups to identify issues and solutions with different audiences in mind. Peck and Kamer engaged the groups in the problem-solving exercise and we reconvened to discuss the approaches presented. What came out of the exercise is that lawyers and public relations practitioners have competing agendas and do not always see eye to eye. We can also become distracted by issues of less immediate import (i.e., the PR agency junior associate’s blunder). What might appear to be a heartfelt apology from the PR perspective may actually be construed as admitting legal liability from corporate counsel’s perspective. In the end, the small groups representing different interests were not all on the same page – a situation that is very common in a crisis, especially when a company does not have a proactive crisis management plan in place.

It is important for lawyers, legal marketers and public relations practitioners to remember that there are two courts in this scenario: the court of law and the court of public opinion. Law firms often receive the first call when a client crisis strikes. Clients fear the worst: litigation, fines and criminal penalties. Kamer and Peck stressed that lawyers need to understand best practices in crisis management, so they can position themselves to advise clients on issues with longer-term implications: those that affect reputation, share value and trust.

Here are a few of the key points (verbatim):

• Law firm chief marketing officers should be the leaders in crisis management – not necessarily law firm management.
• Crisis managers need to know if the work at issue is covered by attorney-client privilege and understand that there is some question as to privilege being extended once a third-party agency is involved.
• A crisis manager needs to know how to speak, multi-task, be credible, stay on point, reassure allies and overcome adversities.
• In a crisis, lawyers instinctively say “no comment,” which makes them look stupid and inept.
• Lead, don’t manage. Have a crisis plan. Remember, people are people.
• Figure out who the best-positioned, unbiased person is to determine what happened as quickly as possible, then immediately investigate the crisis.
• Determine the best spokesperson to speak about a corporate crisis. Be sure the spokesperson can take complex issues and make them simple for the media.
• Establish a decision-making team with five to six members who can move a crisis resolution forward.
• Conduct an analysis to understand the situation, the opportunities, the threats and the key messages.

Essentially, crises present law firms with the opportunity to incorporate their skills for thinking critically and grasping facts quickly, and to demonstrate their knowledge of business practices and ethics. Kamer and Peck said, “That’s why it’s so important that law firms perfect their ability to offer quality crisis management to clients during their ‘worst moments ever.’”

Gina F. Rubel is the owner of Furia Rubel Communications Inc., an integrated marketing and public relations agency with a niche in legal marketing. A former trial attorney, she is the author of Everyday Public Relations for Lawyers. Rubel and her agency have won many awards for legal communications, PR, media relations, website and graphic design, strategic planning, corporate philanthropy and leadership. She maintains a blog, is a contributor to National Law Review, The Legal Intelligencer Blog, AVVO Lawyernomics and The Huffington Post. You can find her on LinkedIn or follow her on Twitter. For more information, go to www.FuriaRubel.com.

When Enough Is Enough and a Little Is Too Much

By Melissa M. Gomez
Special to the Legal

The Kermit Gosnell abortion clinic trial in Philadelphia made national news with the tagline “House of Horrors.” The tagline was fitting, considering the graphic photographs and testimony that the jury had to endure, describing accusations of babies born alive at the clinic that were later killed by Gosnell and other members of his staff.

As a jury consultant in the region, I received a few calls from reporters asking for commentary about the trial and the fact that, after days upon days of seeing and hearing horrible things, the jurors seemed not to react as strongly to the evidence as they did when the trial began and graphic evidence was first introduced. One reporter wanted to know whether that meant the jurors weren’t being impacted by the evidence anymore and whether the graphic nature of the testimony was, in fact, beginning to backfire on the prosecution. My answer: “The evidence is likely still quite impactful, but it very well may become impactful in a way it was not intended to be.”

Because many of the cases I work on involve personal injuries, I have seen some pretty horrible accidents with unthinkable injuries. The photographic evidence in these cases can be extremely difficult to look at, in general, especially when the accidents involve children.

When trying these kinds of cases, it is critical to stop and consider what the jury really needs to see and how much. Juries don’t want to see horrible and descriptive photos. At all. There are some instances in which the photographs of the injuries are critical evidence to determine what really happened and whether there is blame to be doled out. This was likely the case with several aspects of the Gosnell trial.

There are other instances in which horrible graphic evidence does not tell the story of liability, but is purposed to show the terrible nature of the injuries for the purpose of damages. Take a case in which there was a leak in a boiler that caused carbon monoxide to leak into the apartment above, killing the inhabitants. The bodies were found several weeks later in a scene akin to a horror movie. Did the jurors need to see those bodies in varying states of decomposition to determine who was at fault for a leak in the boiler? No, they didn’t.

At times, especially for plaintiffs, there is the urge to show the jury the gruesome aftermath of an accident to bring into the courtroom the true horror of what was experienced. An angry and upset jury may be more likely to award higher damages, after all.

There are times in which doing so is ill advised, though. When such upsetting images don’t help a jury make its decision, jurors can become angry at whoever is forcing them to look at such horrible things. I have heard jurors complain that images and testimony were simply purposed to manipulate their emotions so the plaintiffs could get what they wanted. In those instances, the jurors did get upset, but not in the way the plaintiffs intended.

If such images are indeed important to show in the case, it also may be unwise to show them repeatedly. First, jurors will become desensitized and, while the images will continue to be disturbing, the shock value will abate, which was likely the issue in the Gosnell trial. Showing these kinds of images repeatedly may also, again, cross that line in jurors’ minds from important evidence to emotional manipulation.

If you are going to show photos of a terrible injury, give jurors a warning that you are about to show an upsetting image before you introduce it and show it only as many times as absolutely needed – just once, if possible. If you need to refer to it again, do so orally. If the image were truly that disturbing, the jurors wouldn’t have forgotten about it. To the contrary, it would likely be seared in their brains.

My advice when showing graphic images not absolutely critical to the case is not to show them at trial. In more than one trial, I have had attorneys put the images in an envelope, instead, and tell the jurors that the pictures are there if they feel the images are important to see, but that viewing them is their choice in deliberations. In truth, the jurors usually can’t help themselves. They look anyway.

Melissa M. Gomez is a jury consultant and owner of MMG Jury Consulting LLC. She holds a Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Pennsylvania. Her experience includes work on hundreds of jury trials in Philadelphia and across the country, with a focus on the psychology of juror learning, behavior and decision-making. She has more than a decade of expertise in research design and methodology, as well as in behavioral and communication skills training.

This posting is for general informational purposes only and should not be construed or interpreted as advice specific to any matter. Each case is different and no strategy applies uniformly to all. If you have any questions regarding jury psychology that you would like to see addressed in this blog, contact Gomez at [email protected] or call 215-292-7956.

Justices Reject Murderer Lambert’s Appeal

By Ben Present
Of the Legal Staff

The state Supreme Court has declined to weigh in on the second Post-Conviction Relief Act petition of Lisa Michelle Lambert, seeming to close the convicted murderer’s decades-long series of appeals following her conviction.

The justices rejected Lambert’s petition for allowance of appeal without comment Monday.

Last year, the state Superior Court issued an opinion on Lambert’s second PCRA petition when a three-judge panel ruled that Lambert had failed to meet the "newly discovered evidence" exception to the PCRA's timeliness requirement. Instead of new evidence, Lambert had introduced a "newly willing source" to her decades-long allegations that her 1992 bench trial rendered her the victim of prosecutorial misconduct, according to the opinion.

More than two decades have passed since Lambert was first convicted of the 1991 murder of Lancaster teen Laurie Show, whom Lambert stalked and murdered because Lambert thought Show, then a 16-year-old high school sophomore, was romantically involved with Lambert's boyfriend, Lawrence Yunkin. Yunkin, whom Show had accused of raping her, and another woman, Tabitha F. Buck, were also convicted in Show's throat-slashing.

And at least one tribunal agreed with Lambert's story. That came in 1997, when U.S. District Judge Stewart Dalzell of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania declared Lambert "actually innocent," writing that police and prosecutors had stained Lambert's trial by destroying or tampering with evidence that Lambert insisted would have proved her innocence.

Among Lambert's claims was the allegation that police framed her to cover up an alleged gang-rape in which three East Lampeter Township police officers sexually assaulted Lambert just months before the murder took place.

But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit twice upheld Lambert's conviction and sharply criticized Dalzell's handling of Lambert's case. The Third Circuit said Dalzell failed to show appropriate deference to the findings of Pennsylvania state courts. Effectively, the appeals court ruled, Dalzell let Lambert retry her case.

The case history of Commonwealth v. Lambert includes a bench-trial conviction, a failed direct appeal in state court, a federal habeas petition, a 300-plus-page opinion from the trial judge on Lambert's PCRA try, another habeas petition in which Dalzell recused at the request of prosecutors, and the Third Circuit's subsequent dismissal of Lambert's second federal petition.

In her most recent legal saga, according to the Superior Court’s opinion last November, Lambert has alleged that she has a letter written by the now-deceased prosecutor who handled her trial in 1992 that bolsters her claims. According to Lambert, the opinion said, former Lancaster County prosecutor John A. Kenneff, who later became a defense attorney, wrote to a former client, Warren Raffensberger, admitting that the events leading up to Raffensberger's conviction were illegal and calling the justice system in that county "corrupt." Raffensberger’s case was unrelated to Lambert’s case.

In addition to that letter, Lambert also provided a four-page handwritten affidavit from Raffensberger in which he swears Kenneff confessed to tampering with evidence in the Lambert case when he was still in the prosecutor’s office.

Ben Present can be contacted at 215-557-2315 or [email protected] Follow him on Twitter @BPresentTLI.

City Still on Track to Hire Conflict Counsel

By Amaris Elliott-Engel
Of the Legal Staff

The city of Philadelphia still plans to enter into a contract with a legal services vendor to represent Philadelphians in criminal and family cases with which the Defender Association of Philadelphia has a conflict, according to Michael R. Resnick, director of public safety.

“We’ve had a preliminary meeting of the RFP review committee to review the five proposals that were submitted,” Resnick said in an email. “We will be meeting again shortly to discuss which respondents we would like to give presentations and answer our questions. Once that phase is complete, we will hopefully have selected a vendor with whom we will enter into a contract.”

In the wake of the Philadelphia city government's assumption of responsibility for the payment of private attorneys appointed in criminal and family cases, the Nutter administration sought "creative and innovative" proposals on legal representation in cases in which the defender association has a conflict.

The deadline for proposals was a couple of months ago.

The Philadelphia Bar Association has questioned a for-profit model on the grounds that “it will create a tension pitting the needs of the individual indigent client with the desires and goals of the entity to make a profit."

In response, the Nutter administration has asked attorneys from the bar association to help review applicants’ proposals.

Amaris Elliott-Engel can be contacted at 215-557-2354 or [email protected] Follow her on Twitter @AmarisTLI.

Attorney Disagrees Precedent Pre-empts Judicial Retirement Suit in Commonwealth Court

By Amaris Elliott-Engel
Of the Legal Staff

During Pennsylvania Supreme Court oral arguments in two lawsuits challenging mandatory judicial retirement, Justice J. Michael Eakin asked about another lawsuit currently pending in the Commonwealth Court and whether all three cases could be tossed because the high court, in Gondelman v. Commonwealth, has previously rejected a constitutional challenge to mandatory retirement.

J. Bart DeLone, a senior deputy attorney general who argued against overturning the retirement requirement in both the Supreme and Commonwealth courts, said in response to Eakin that Gondelman does control all three cases.

However, one of the attorneys for the judicial plaintiffs in the Commonwealth Court case said in an interview that their lawsuit differs from the two lawsuits taken up by the Supreme Court under its extraordinary jurisdiction.

Tom Groshens, of Sprague & Sprague, said in an interview that “our case includes claims by qualified voters who contend that mandatory retirement deprived them of the efficacy of their vote for [Commonwealth Court Senior] Judge [Rochelle S.] Friedman for a 10-year term because that 10-year term was cut short by three years.” The lawsuit also involves a challenge to the 2001 constitutional amendment that changed the mandatory retirement from the birthdays on which judges turn 70 to the end of the year in which judges turn 70.

Some judges get to serve longer than others just because of when their birthdays fall, which is “amplified discrimination,” Groshens said.

Further, the presiding judge in Commonwealth Court, Senior Judge James Gardner Colins, said that he was not sure Gondelman applies to all the theories in the Friedman suit – “indeed, the people elected the individual jurists to a 10-year term,” Groshens pointed out.

When asked for comment, a spokesman for the Attorney General’s Office referred The Legal to the government’s brief.

The presence of the three voters is beside the point, because they “are presenting the same claim that the Supreme Court rejected in Gondelman,” DeLone, Attorney General Kathleen G. Kane and John G. Knorr III, chief deputy attorney general, wrote in the Commonwealth Court brief.

While the plaintiffs claim the 2001 amendment “exacerbates the violation of Article I,” the state’s brief said. “But this, too, can make no difference: the holding in Gondelman is that in forming or altering their government, the people are not constrained by the provisions of Article I,” which spells out the fundamental rights Pennsylvanians have under the state constitution.

The Legal’s full coverage of the oral arguments can be read here.

Amaris Elliott-Engel can be contacted at 215-557-2354 or [email protected] Follow her on Twitter @AmarisTLI.

Markell Signs Measure Expanding Gun Background Checks

By Jeff Mordock
Delaware Law Weekly

Governor Jack Markell today signed a bill that would require criminal background checks for all Delaware gun sales, including the transfer of sale of firearms between private parties.

Under the legislation, known as House Bill 35, licensed firearms dealers will be required to perform background checks and required to maintain records of the background checks in accordance with state and federal law.

The General Assembly had considered legislation to address the private sale loophole at least six times since 1990, but none of those bills ever made it to a floor vote, according to the governor’s office.

Markell unveiled the legislation in March at a ceremony attended by Lieutenant Governor Matt Denn, Attorney General Beau Biden and former Governor Mike Castle, a Republican. A collection of the top police chiefs in Delaware also attended the event, which was at the Carvel State Office Building.

“Thanks to your hard work, your dedication and your passion, today we are closing the private sale loophole once and for all,” Markell said in a released statement. “No longer will we have two different markets for the sale of firearms – a regulated market for dealers and an unregulated market for everyone else. No longer will our laws draw a meaningless distinction between dealers and non-dealers when it comes to requiring background checks. And no longer will we tolerate a system that too easily allows criminals to acquire guns and commit more crimes. You made this happen – each and every one of you.”

The background check bill was also praised by several city mayors, including New York’s Michael Bloomberg and Wilmington’s Dennis P. Williams.

“After more than 40 U.S. senators shirked their responsibility to protect the American people by voting against comprehensive background checks, Delaware stepped up and made reform a reality at the state level,” Bloomberg said.

Williams echoed Bloomberg’s appreciation of the bill’s potential impact.

“By passing comprehensive gun reform legislation, Governor Markell and Delaware’s legislators stood with the overwhelming majority of Americans who have demanded action to help save lives,” Williams said.

Jeff Mordock can be contacted at 215-557-2485 or [email protected] Follow him on Twitter @JeffMordockTLI.