Lane’s high-profile lawyer

Inquirer Staff Writer

The lawyer representing news anchor Alycia Lane in her battle with CBS3 has long experience handling high-profile cases where professional reputations and plenty of money are at stake.

Paul R. Rosen also is known as a fierce advocate for his clients, stretching back to his days representing a defendant in the Abscam political-corruption case.

He represented the Lower Merion Township Commissioners in their lawsuit against former Barnes Foundation board member Richard H. Glanton, who accused the panel of racism for opposing the Barnes’ expansion plans.

Glanton later apologized and paid Rosen $400,000 in attorney fees.

He also represented former Pennsylvania State Sen. Bruce Marks in his successful legal battle to overturn the results of a 1993 Second District special election. Marks argued, and a federal judge agreed, that many of the absentee ballots filed on behalf of his opponent were fraudulent.

KYW-TV said yesterday that it had fired Lane following her arrest Dec. 16 for assaulting a New York City police officer. The station said Lane could no longer report the news because she herself had become the subject of intense coverage.

Rosen fired back, saying her termination was “unwarranted and unusual.”

He added: “It comes at a time when there has been absolutely no determination that Alycia is guilty of any wrongful conduct.”

Rosen, is chairman of Spector, Ganton & Rosen, a 60-lawyer firm based in Center City.

He is a go-to lawyer for prominent people faced with sticky legal situations and intense media scrutiny.

Such was the case in 1991 when Rosen represented Lawrence Bathgate 2d, a confidant of former New Jersey Gov. Tom Kean and a former national finance chairman of the GOP, in a dispute with First National Bank of Toms River. After the bank was declared insolvent by federal regulators, bank officials accused Bathgate of defaulting on $16 million in loans.

Bathgate eventually won the case.

“He is still a friend and a client,” Rosen said yesterday.

Rosen hasn’t been shy about going after the press, either.

As a defense attorney in the Abscam political-corruption case in 1980s, he urged the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit to uphold a contempt citation against an Inquirer reporter who had declined to testify about her contacts with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Philadelphia the day the story broke.

The appeals court eventually upheld the contempt citation; the reporter gave limited testimony, acknowledging only that she had been in contact with prosecutors.