Oct 13, 2018 4 min read

A decade’s worth of legal wrangling among members of the Washington County Democratic Committee may have come to a close this week in light of a state appellate court decision.

“I think this was a vendetta of Mr. (George) Vitteck,” said attorney Charles Kurowski, who has represented Milan Marinkovich, who prevailed Oct. 10 in Superior Court, since 2011.

George Vitteck Jr., a Canton Township resident, and Marinkovich, a Carroll Township Democratic committeeman, more than once vied for the chairmanship of the Washington County Democratic Committee.

The Democratic Committee took action in February 2008 against Marinkovich, its former chairman, alleging he had property that belonged to the committee.

At a hearing convened two months later, the committee acknowledged Marinkovich had returned computers, a checkbook, deposit slips, a stamp for endorsing checks and a then-recent PNC bank statement,.

Not obtained by the committee were older bank statements and contribution records, which Marinkovich did not keep after filing reports with the county and state.

Marinkovich was willing to authorize the bank and elections office to turn over copies of the documentation. The committee eventually “conceded that Marinkovich had fulfilled his obligations” in recovering property in a technical sense, but “provided the equivalent of an automobile without an engine.”

An audit from the Cypher and Cypher firm asked Washington County Judge John DiSalle to award the committee money damages as compensation, but it did not provide details of the cost to re-create the records. The audit also opined Marinkovich “broke campaign finance laws, improperly destroyed the records of the committee and paid personal expenses with committee funds.”

Marinkovich contended he had turned over everything to the committee, that missing records had been obtained through authorizations and the unsigned Cypher report improperly impugned him as someone who had violated campaign finance laws and paid $5,194 for personal legal defense with committee funds.

Marinkovich filed a notice of appeal with Commonwealth Court and did not appear at a hearing in Washington County Court on advice of counsel while his appeal was pending. DiSalle later found him and his counsel in contempt of court for not appearing and called Marinkovich’s conduct during the course of four years to be “consistently dilatory, obdurate and vexatious.”

Five and a half years later, DiSalle absolved Marinkovich and his counsel of contempt. The Superior Court judges noted that by January 2012, Marinkovich had fully complied with DiSalle’s 2011 order.

“His subsequent actions were taken to seek review of the trial court’s orders, not to persist in wrongdoing or cause unnecessary delay,” Superior Court decided. “There was merit to Marinkovich’s claims of error, and his conduct was not vexatious.”

In a 19-page memorandum written by Judge Mary Jane Bowes, Superior Court found DiSalle lacked authority to:

• Adjudicate Election Code violations in a case that dealt with the return of property;
• Require Marinkovich to re-create property he did not possess;
• Order Marinkovich to reimburse the committee for the $5,194.

“Whether Marinkovich did or did not violate the Election Code is irrelevant to this action,” Bowes wrote.

She and Judge Carolyn H. Nichols and Senior Judge Gene Strassburger found that the record did not support the award of $3,075 in attorney fees to the county Democratic committee.

Superior Court vacated two lower-court orders and a judgment and sent the case back so a judgment could be entered reflecting that the dispute over property has been concluded.

Kurowski traced the roots of the case back even further than a decade, recalling that Marinkovich supported him in a 2005 judicial race in which Kurowski was a Democratic nominee.

DiSalle, a Democrat, had won a Republican nomination that year and was elected to the Washington County bench.

Kurowski said, however, Marinkovich, as Democratic Party chairman, “put the kibosh” on DiSalle speaking at a Democratic banquet and attending a Democratic picnic before the general election.

Kurowski tried unsuccessfully to have DiSalle recuse himself from hearing the property dispute between Marinkovich and the county Democrats, saying “it was like a billboard that you can’t do what you’re doing.”

Attorney James Jeffries, who represented the Washington County Democratic Party, did not immediately return a call for comment on the Superior Court decision.