Attorney Biographies

Jason A. Spak 
Four Gateway Center
444 Liberty Avenue, Suite 1105
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15222-1220

Communication Center 
Phone: (412) 288-4385
Fax: 412-288-2405
E-mail: jspak@psmn.com
Web site: http://www.psmn.com

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Position	Areas of Practice	Education
Published Works

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Jason Spak is a civil litigator who resolves complex commercial and insurance coverage disputes. He has a particular focus on financial services litigation, and he has handled Fair Credit Reporting Act cases from Maine to California and from Minnesota to Texas. But his practice involves commercial lawsuits of all kinds, including antitrust claims, contract disputes, collections and foreclosures, and disputes over the handling of investments and pensions. He is familiar with all phases of litigation, from pleadings through discovery, motions practice, and trial. He comments on FCRA litigation at http://fcradefense.wordpress.com/.

Jason was an award-winning high school and college prep teacher before he decided to attend law school, and he likes to think that his teaching experience helps him translate legal jargon into plain English.  He received his own education from the University of Michigan Law School (J.D., cum laude, 2002) and the University of Notre Dame (B.A., Honors Program, 1995). While both institutions have been nationally acclaimed (US News & World Report ranks Michigan Law among the top ten among national law schools and Notre Dame among the top twenty national undergraduate programs), Jason cheers for Notre Dame when the two play football.

After graduating from Michigan Law, Jason first learned his trade in the Pittsburgh offices of two of the world's largest law firms. In 2002, he joined the international law firm of Jones Day as a litigation attorney in what the American Lawyer Magazine later named the Litigation Department of the Year. In 2006, he joined the international law firm of Reed Smith and its acclaimed financial services practice. At both firms, he helped defend several bet the company lawsuits involving a paint manufacturer, a call center operator, a soft drink manufacturer, and a mutual fund family.

Jason lives with his wife and children in the Friendship section of the City of Pittsburgh , where he provides pro bono legal services to Friendship Development Associates, Inc. and to the Pittsburgh Toy Lending Library.

Representative Cases:

Valley Waste Service v. Big Beaver Borough (Beaver CCP, 2010) obtained judgment affirming client's challenges to a conditional use permit

Stublaski v. Trans Union (D. Minn. 2009) obtained dismissal of FCRA claim

Jarvis v. Rossetti (E.D.N.Y. 2009) obtained dismissal of ERISA claim

Wells Fargo Home Mortgage Inc. v. Schoen (Allegheny CCP, 2008) obtained judgment on the pleadings in a contested foreclosure

Perez v. Trans Union, 526 F. Supp. 2d 504 (E.D. Pa. 2007) obtained summary judgment of FCRA claim

Diamond Triumph v. Safelite, 441 F. Supp. 2d 695 (M.D. Pa. 2006) obtained summary judgment of Lanham Act claim

Pucciarelli v. Friendship Development Associates (Allegheny CCP, 2006) obtained dismissal of lis pendens and breach of contract claim     

Current Employment Position(s):

Associate, since 2009

Areas of Practice:

Complex Commercial Litigation

Insurance Coverage Litigation

Financial Services Litigation

Fair Credit Reporting Act Litigation

Bar Admissions:

Pennsylvania, 2002

U.S. District Court Western District of Pennsylvania, 2003

U.S. District Court Eastern District of Pennsylvania, 2004

U.S. District Court District of Colorado, 2006

U.S. District Court Eastern District of Wisconsin, 2006

U.S. District Court Southern District of Texas, 2009

U.S. District Court Eastern District of Michigan, 2011

Education:

The University of Michigan Law School, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 2002
J.D.
Honors: Cum Laude

University of Notre Dame, 1995
B.A.
Honors: Honors Program
Major:  Government

Published Works:

"Relief for Resellers: Two Reasons Why FCRA claims against resellers may be dismissed before trial", National Credit Reporting Association, Inc., May 2010

"Consumer Class Actions Involving Credit & Debit Card Receipts Hit Retailers Nationwide", Defense Research Institute, March 2008 (with John McIntyre)

Past Employment Positions:

Reed Smith, LLP, Associate, 2006 - 2009

Jones Day, Associate, 2002 - 2006

Birth Information:

1973, Livonia, Michigan, United States of America

 

 

Latest Business and Legal News

These news items and case summaries are a service provided by FindLaw. Picadio Sneath Miller & Norton, P.C. does not endorse any service or product advertised or discussed in any of these items.

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Case Summaries

Intellectual Property

[02/01] Thorner v. Sony Computer Entertainment America LLC
In a patent infringement action concerning a patent relating to a tactile feedback system for computer video games, the district court's judgment of noninfringement upon stipulation is vacated and the case remanded, where: 1) the district court improperly limited the term "attached to said pad" to mean attachment only to an external surface, and the parties based the stipulation of noninfringement on the district court's erroneous construction of this claim; and 2) the district court erred in its construction of the term "flexible."

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[01/27] Krippelz v. Ford Motor Co.
In a patent infringement case involving a vehicle-mounted lamp, the district court's denial of the defendant's motion for judgment as a matter of law on invalidity is reversed, its summary judgment of infringement is vacated, and the case is remanded for entry of judgment of nonliability for the defendant, where the district court committed reversible error in its holdings that: 1) a reasonable jury could find that a competing French patent failed to teach the required "conical beam of light;" and 2) the jury could have reasonably found the French patent to lack a lamp "adjacent to the window."

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Insurance Law

[02/03] Pennsylvania National Mutual Casualty Insurance Co. v. Roberts
In a suit brought by an insurer seeking a declaratory judgment that it was required to indemnify its insured for no more than 40 percent of a state court judgment because it had covered its insured for no more than 40 percent of the time in which the state court plaintiff was exposed to lead poisoning, the district court's judgment is: 1) affirmed in part, where it was correct in allocating the insurer's liability using the pro-rata time on-the-risk, and its decision to use the plaintiff's date of birth as the starting point for the period in which she was exposed to lead poisoning was sound; and 2) reversed in part, where the district court erred in holding the insurer liable for 24 months of coverage rather than 22, since under the insurance contract, coverage ended when the property was sold.

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[02/03] Scandinavian Reinsurance Co. Ltd. v. Saint Paul Fire and Marine Insurance Co.
The district court's grant of a petition to vacate an arbitral award is reversed, and on remand the district court is instructed to grant a cross-petition to confirm the award, where there was insufficient evidence before the district court on which to base a finding of "evident partiality" within the meaning of the Federal Arbitration Act despite the failure of two arbitrators to disclose their concurrent service as arbitrators in another, arguably similar, arbitration.

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Environmental Law

[02/03] Pacific Rivers Council v. US Forest Service
In a suit challenging Forest Service amendments to the Sierra Nevada Forest Plan as inconsistent with the National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA) and the Administrative Procedure Act, the district court's grant of summary judgment to the Forest Service is: 1) reversed in part, where the plaintiff had Article III standing, and the failure of the environmental impact statement (EIS) to provide any analysis of the environmental consequences on individual fish species was a failure to comply with the hard look requirement of NEPA; and 2) affirmed in part, insofar as the Forest Service did take a hard look at environmental consequences on amphibians in the EIS, in compliance with NEPA.

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[01/26] Chevron Corp. v. Naranjo
In a case in which a potential judgment-debtor sought a global anti-enforcement injunction against defendants from the Lago Agrio region of the Ecuadorian Amazon, prohibiting them from attempting to enforce an allegedly fraudulent judgment entered by an Ecuadorian court, the district court's grant of the injunction is reversed with orders to dismiss the claim, where the district court erred in construing New York’s Uniform Foreign Country Money-Judgments Recognition Act to grant the putative judgment-debtors a cause of action to challenge foreign judgments before enforcement of those judgments was sought.

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Commercial Law

[02/01] In re American Express Merchants' Litigation
In a class action asserting Sherman Act claims, brought against a charge card issuer whose card acceptance agreement purported to preclude a merchant from bringing a class action lawsuit, the district court's grant of the defendant's motion to compel arbitration and dismissal of the case is reversed, where the cost of plaintiffs' individually arbitrating their dispute with the defendant would be prohibitive, effectively depriving them of the statutory protections of the antitrust laws, and thus the class action waiver in the arbitration provision was unenforceable.

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[01/27] C9 Ventures v. SVC-West, L.P.
In a personal injury suit in which a lessor of helium-filled tanks used to inflate festive balloons cross-complained against the lessee to enforce an indemnification provision on the back of an unsigned invoice, the trial court's judgment in favor of the lessor and award of attorney fees to it is reversed, where: 1) the lessee did not manifest assent to the terms on the back of the unsigned invoice by course of dealing or course of performance, or under basic contract law; 2) the lessee did not sign the invoice or otherwise expressly agree to its terms; 3) an unsigned invoice itself is not a contract, and repeated delivery of a particular form does not make the form part of the parties' agreement; 4) payment of the invoice merely constituted the lessee's performance of the obligation under the oral contract to pay for the rental of the helium-filled tanks; and 5) assuming the transaction was a sale of goods covered by division 2 of the California Commercial Code, the indemnification provision was not an additional term of the contract under section 2207 of the Commercial Code.

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