Peer Review Ratings

Best Law Firms®. Murane & Bostwick, LLC, Attorneys at Law, is a Tier 1 firm in Personal Injury Defense and Medical Malpractice Law - Defendants Law as ranked by Best Law Firms® for 2011-2012. The firm is also ranked in Transportation Law. 

Super Lawyers®.  M&B attorneys Greg Greenlee and Hank Combs have been selected for the 2011/2012 peer  reviewed Super Lawyers® rankings, Greenlee in the field of General Personal Injury Defense, and Combs in the field of Medical Malpractice Defense.

In January 2011, Corporate INTL® magazine named Murane & Bostwick, Attorneys at Law, as Corporate INTL’s Law Firm of the Year in Wyoming in the practice areas of Insurance & Reinsurance, Litigation Advice, Transport, Employment/Labor Law and Real Estate.  With 70,000 readers world wide, Corporate INTL is a leading business magazine for entrepreneurs, consultants and financial service providers.

Litigation Successes

Defense verdict for trucking company in highway accident

Michael and Cindy Clapp and Colton Clapp v. Great American Lines, Inc. and Ray Colvin, Docket No. 30169, District Court, Sixth Judicial District, State of Wyoming. M & B attorney Loyd Smith recently obtained a defense verdict in a jury trial in Gillette, Wyoming on behalf of trucking company Great American Lines, Inc. and its driver Ray Colvin. The case concerned significant injuries sustained by the plaintiff in a collision between plaintiff Michael Clapp’s pickup truck with the defendant’s tractor trailer which was making a turn off a highway.  Following a four-day trial, the jury found that plaintiff Michael Clapp was sixty percent at fault which, under Wyoming’s comparative fault law, resulted in no recovery for the plaintiffs.

Pharmacists’ license revocation or suspension averted

Wyoming’s Pharmacy Act requires that a pharmacist must review the pharmacy’s records in connection with any prescription drug order to identify, among other issues, overutilization – that is, refilling prescriptions earlier than the prescribing physician permitted.  The Executive Director of the Board of Pharmacy charged six Cheyenne, Wyoming pharmacists, including the Pharmacist in Charge, with violations of the Act, with the Petition requesting revocation or suspension of each of the pharmacist’s licenses to practice pharmacy in Wyoming.  Following several months of meetings, arguments and depositions in which Murane & Bostwick attorney Kathleen Swanson represented the pharmacists, the State and the pharmacists entered into separate settlement agreements in which the pharmacists retained their right to practice pharmacy premised on the obligation that they each submit a plan to ensure compliance with the requirements of the Act and complete continuing education of drug use review.  Additionally, the Pharmacist in Charge was required to pay a fine and to present information to all of the company’s Pharmacists in Charge on the importance of compliance with the requirements of the Pharmacy Act. 

Daubert motion granted, case immediately settles for nuisance value

Treweek v. The Crosby Group, Inc., Civil 09-CV-284, U.S.D.C., Wyoming.  Troy Treweek filed suit against our client, The Crosby Group, and another defendant, Black Hills Trucking, for injuries Treweek sustained while working as a floor hand on a drilling rig crew.  The Crosby Group was the manufacturer of a hook and standard spring-loaded latch on the Black Hills crane being used to move heavy equipment onto the well head.  In the process, rigging chains in the hook became tangled with the crane’s main block.  The latch failed resulting in the chains falling on the plaintiff.  The plaintiff designated Lewis Barbe as a crane expert to testify with respect to the defective design of the latch on the basis that it was not designed to bear the same load as the hook itself.  The system satisfied all applicable industry standards set forth by ASTM and by OSHA.  At a hearing on the Friday before the Monday start of trial, the U.S. District Court Judge granted Crosby’s Daubert motion on the basis that the expert’s opinion lacked a scientific basis. The Crosby Group had made a nuisance value, cost of defense settlement offer months before, which was hastily accepted immediately following the ruling on the motion. Murane & Bostwick attorneys Hank Combs and James Worthen represented the defendant Crosby Group. 

Judgment for defendants in trespass claim

Ziemens v. City of Torrington and Board of the County Commissioners of the County of Goshen, Wyoming, Case No. CV 2009-211.  Murane & Bostwick attorney Loyd Smith, representing the defendants, obtained a defense judgment following a bench trial in August, 2011, in state district court in Goshen County.  The case involved a claim by landowners that the City of Torrington and Goshen County had erected a power line tower on plaintiffs’ property, thereby effecting a trespass and a taking.  The City and County asserted the tower fell within the right-of-way of a county road adjacent to the plaintiffs’ property.  The primary issue was the width of the county road established in 1909, resolution of which involved review of 100 year-old original surveyor’s notes and other archived documents relating to the establishment of the road.  After a trial to the Court, the District Court judge ruled that the width of the roadway encompassed the power line tower; hence there had been no trespass or taking.

Law firm’s client granted summary judgment in oil field accident

Johnson v. True Oil, LLC, et al., Civil No. C-09-427R, District Court, Third Judicial District, State of Wyoming.  Murane & Bostwick attorneys Hank Combs and James Worthen obtained summary judgment on behalf of the firm’s client Allen & Crouch, Petroleum Engineers, in a personal injury oilfield accident filed by Adam Johnson.  Johnson, a floor hand, was injured during a casing operation (removal of pipe from a well) during an overhaul of a True Oil Company well.  Among other claims, Johnson alleged that the negligent decisions and actions of Don Carlson, the Company Man for True Oil, was a proximate cause of his injuries.  Defendant Allen & Crouch, acting as a placement service, had facilitated the placement of Mr. Carson with True Oil.  Murane & Bostwick attorneys moved for summary judgment on the basis that Mr. Carlson was an independent contractor, and that despite consultations with Bill Allen of Allen & Crouch, he was not being supervised by Allen & Crouch.  Finding that Mr. Carlson’s contractual and financial relationship with Allen & Crouch was one of employer-independent contactor, as contrasted to employer-employee, and that Allen & Crouch did not exercise control over how Mr. Carlson performed his work as a company man for True Oil, the court granted summary judgment on behalf of Allen and Crouch.

Seminars, Publications & Presentations

Murane & Bostwick attorney Loyd Smith is the contributing editor for the Wyoming section of Business Torts, A Fifty-State Guide.  The book is a reference compendium of business tort law published by Aspen Publishers and updated annually.  Mr. Smith has been the Wyoming editor since 2007.

Murane & Bostwick attorneys have been very active in the past year in ALFA International activities. Murane & Bostwick attorneys, as they have for several years, prepared summaries of Wyoming law for ALFA’s workers’ compensation, construction, insurance, transportation and product liability practice groups.  In October, attorney Jim Bell attended the ALFA Annual Business Meeting; in May, attorney Kathleen Swanson attended the ALFA Transportation Practice Group’s Client Seminar; and in March, attorney Greg Greenlee attended ALFA’s International Client Seminar. 

Murane & Bostwick attorneys Greg Greenlee and Kathy Swanson have again – as they have for the past several years – collaborated in the preparation of the Wyoming Section of the 2012 Product Liability Desk Reference – A 50 State Compendium, published by Wolters Kluwer, Law & Business. 

In February, Murane & Bostwick attorney James Worthen spoke to the Casper College Paralegal program on Updates to Rule 26 of the state and federal Rules of Civil Procedure. 

In April, Murane & Bostwick attorney Greg Greenlee spoke to the Legal Assistants of Wyoming on the topic of Discovery, and in May to the Wyoming Claims Association on Spoliation of Evidence.