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Commonwealth Court affirms local decision in facet of long-running feud among Dems

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Commonwealth Court has affirmed a lower court’s decision in part of a long-running dispute among former chairmen of the Washington County Democratic Party.

A five-page memorandum opinion written by Commonwealth Court Judge Michael H. Wojcik, filed Monday, upheld the 2017 Washington County Court decision dismissing a suit brought the previous year by former Democratic chairman Milan Marinkovich of Carroll Township.

Marinkovich, as a Democratic committeeman, sued former Democratic Party chairman George Vitteck of Canton Township and then-chairman Ron Sicchitano of North Bethlehem Township.

Marinkovich claimed Vitteck wrongfully kept two computers, monitors and printers, meeting minutes, checkbook ledgers, bank statements and receipts for a debit card he used while he was chairman from 2008 to 2014.

Sicchitano wouldn’t go along with pursuing return of the property or conducting an audit of Vitteck’s time as party chairman.

The county Democratic Party, Vitteck and Sicchitano argued that Marinkovich did not “have standing to file and prosecute” the case because he was not a party officer, and only a chairman or member of the party’s executive committee had that authority.

President Judge Katherine B. Emery, in dismissing Marinkovich’s complaint, agreed that he, as a member of the county committee, lacked standing to sue the officers of the organization for violating a by-law policy, and Marinkovich “did not establish that he had a substantial, direct and immediate interest in the outcome of the litigation.”

Infighting among this generation of Democrats – all retirees – can be traced to June 2006, when Vitteck and Markinkovich first faced off for the party chairmanship, resulting in a spate of litigation.

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