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Solicitor has liability insurance, but effective date still unknown

So who was right?

The issue first was raised earlier in January when Commissioner Cindy Morrison opposed Shreve’s re-appointment as solicitor, specifically identifying that Shreve did not carry coverage.

Warren County Solicitor John Shreve now carries professional liability insurance.

That’s now no longer the end result of an attorney search through the Disciplinary Board of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.

That site reads as follows: “I maintain, either individually or through my firm, professional liability insurance pursuant to the provisions of Rule of Professional Conduct 1.4(c).”

“My duties as Solicitor do not include allowing a Commissioner to knowingly and publicly make false statements about me, my family and my business,” Shreve said when contacted by the Times Observer.

“I am not required to carry this insurance, but I do,” he said. “I have submitted paperwork to the (Disciplinary) Board requesting that they update the website to reflect this fact via a standard form promulgated for this purpose.”

“I showed the Chairman (Ben Kafferlin) of the Warren County Board of Commissioners paperwork that confirmed my coverage limits of $500,000 per incident and $1,000,000 aggregate and verifying the policy is in effect,” Shreve said on Wednesday.

On Tuesday, Commissioner Ben Kafferlin confirmed that Shreve supplied a certificate of insurance but declined to indicate the effective date of the policy.

Neither Shreve nor Kafferlin disclosed the effective date of the policy, which would show whether he had insurance at the Jan. 10 meeting when Morrison alleged that he didn’t.

The Times Observer filed a Right to Know request on Tuesday for the certificate of malpractice insurance, because it has not received the certificate.

Chief Clerk Pam Matve, who is also the county’s open records officer, asked the Times Observer for an extension to the request.

The Times Observer objected to the request.

According to the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association, “an agency can request additional time in a number of circumstances, including the need for redaction, legal review, bona fide and specified staffing limitations, remote storage of records, failure to follow agency RTKL procedure, failure to pay applicable fees, or where the nature of the request requires additional time. Section 902(b) of the Right to Know Law states that when an agency requests an additional 30 calendar days, the agency must notify the requestor that the request is being reviewed, the reason for the review, a fee estimate and a reasonable date that a response is expected. If the expected response date exceeds the 30 calendar days permitted by law, the request is deemed denied unless the requestor agrees to an extension in writing.”

In this case, an extension was requested by Matve but none of the information identified under Section 902(b) of the Right to Know law were provided.

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