Diane E. Murphy, Attorney at Law

Review: Met with Attorney [redacted] on 11/13/13 to start process to file a suit against a neighboring property owner due to damages to our property during construction of a neighboring property. We paid Attorney [redacted] $2,500 as a retainer to represent us in the lawsuit against the contractors and owners of the neighboring property. We met with her on November 13th and she was to proceed with filing the lawsuit. We did not hear from her for over 5 1/2 months. I contacted her on May 6, 2014 inquiring to where we were in the process of filing the suit. She informed us that she did not know who to sue. She told us she would have to go to the courthouse to research the owners of the property to have the correct property owner. I told her that information was on the Westmoreland County Recorder of Deeds website. Within 5 minutes I gave her the names of the property owners, the contractor liens, etc. She told me she would proceed with the information. I waited 2 1/2 months longer with no phone calls from the attorney. I called and left a message at her office on July 17th asking for a progress report. It had been over 8 months and the only contact from her office was returning my phone call in May when she said she didn't even know who to sue. I also told her in the phone message, if she was not interested in representing us, please just return our money. She sent back $1,821.05. She kept $678.95 for her billable time. She had not done any work since our phone call in May. So in over 8 months, she had not filed any legal paperwork or proceeded with ANY work. Part of her bill was returning the paperwork and sending us part of our money back. Extremely disappointed. Would never recommend using her. Feel all our money should be returned and she should be responsible if any issues arise as to any part of our lawsuit being thrown out due to missing filing deadlines due to statute of limitations.Desired Settlement: Additional monies of $678.95 should be returned as she never showed that she was proceeding with any work. She also should be held liable if any filing deadlines were missed.

Business

Response:

In brief response to your repeated request for an answer to the complaint at the above