Mayerson Law
The Mayerson Law Offices, P.C. (alternately referred to as Mayerson Law, and formerly Mayerson Schreiber McDevitt, P.C.) is a regional U.S. law firm based in Spring City, East Vincent Township, Chester County, Pennsylvania. The firm (often abbreviated MLO), operating under the motto Local Lawyers, National Reputation , serves the Chester County, Berks County, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania and greater Philadelphia region.[2] The firm is notable due to its historic early litigation involving Agent Orange injuries in Southeast Asia, its leadership in international fork lift safety litigation, and its oft-honored founder Hy Mayerson. Additionally, the firm operates in the Meeting House Law Building & Gallery, a Chester County historic landmark and former meeting house now serving as a museum and art gallery.
The firm primarily focuses on its local business in that greater tri-county area, most heavily in Spring City, Royersford, Boyertown, Pottstown, Phoenixville, and the greater Spring-Ford area, including townships of West and East Vincent, East and West Pikeland, East, North, and South Coventry, Limerick, Schuylkill, and Upper and Lower Providence, and the communities of Oaks, Mont Clare, Linfield, Collegeville, Pottsgrove, Sanatoga, Schwenksville, Trappe, New Morgan, Birdsboro, Birchrunville, Perkiomenville, and the surrounding areas.[3]
Though focusing on serving the local Chest-Mont area in which it is located, the firm has tried cases in nearly all 50 U.S. states, including death action claims in nearly a dozen states.
History
Founded in 1963, The Mayerson Law Offices, P.C., has concentrated on litigation pertaining to obtaining merited compensation for clients damaged, injured, permanently disabled, or killed due to companies' or individuals' wrongdoing and/or carelessness, or by unreasonably dangerous products, with both personal cases and high-profile class action suits.[4] The compensation and personal injury lawyers at the Chester County, Pennsylvania law firm are life-long victims' rights attorneys and recognized experts in personal-injury litigation.[5][6]
The firm has been located in The Meeting House Law Building & Gallery, formerly known as the Vincent Mennonite Church, a former Mennonite Meeting House, since 1976. The land itself has been occupied since 1719, and the site, located on Mennonite Church Road at Schuylkill Road (Pennsylvania Route 724) in Spring City, has been occupied by landmark historical church buildings since at least 1750.[7] The current building, erected in 1889, houses the law firm, plus a museum space, and gallery to be known as The ImaginAIRium. Several works by noted Chester County artist Melvin Goldfield are on display in the current gallery portion of the building’s Great Room. The law firm intends to continue operating in the three-story addition after the museum portion opens to the public. The building shares its grounds with an historical multi-denominational cemetery known as Vincent Mennonite Cemetery and Rhoad's Burying Ground, where grave markers date as far back as 1759 and 1760.[8][9]
Practice areas
The Mayerson Law Offices, P.C., is primarily known as a casualty-oriented, victims' rights law firm, with specialties in obtaining suitable compensation necessitated by auto, truck, tractor-trailer, and motorcycle accidents and crashes, drunk drivers, defective and/or unreasonably dangerous products (product liability), and insurance policy holder disputes, as well as a variety of other circumstances.[10][11]
Notable lawyers and alumni
- Hy Mayerson, CEO, lead litigator in cases involving Agent Orange class action, Fork Truck Operator Restraint Systems, and Bad Faith litigation[5], and recipient of the "Sojourner's Award" for leadership in Agent Orange litigation.[12] Mayerson was an early pioneer in Agent Orange litigation, working with renown environmental attorney Victor Yannacone on the first class-action suits against wartime manufacturers of Agent Orange. In meeting Dr. Ronald A. Codario, one of the first civilian doctors to see afflicted patients, Mayerson, so impressed by the fact that an M.D. would show so much interest in a Vietnam veteran, forwarded more than a thousand pages of information on Agent Orange and the effects of dioxin on animals and humans to Codario's office the day after he was first contacted by the doctor as described in the book Waiting for an Army to Die: The Tragedy of Agent Orange by Fred A. Wilcox.[13]
- Margaret Connors, Counsel, a magna cum laude graduate from LaSalle University, with a master's degree from Villanova University and Doctor of Jurisprudence from Villanova University School of Law. Former clerk for Justice William Hutchinson, Justice Juanita Kidd-Stout, and Chief Justice Robert Nix of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania[5], and member of the board of directors of Merion Mercy Academy[14] and the Chester County Bar Foundation.
- Benjamin J. Mayerson, Counsel, a cum laude graduate of Indiana University of Pennsylvania and Doctor of Jurisprudence recipient from Widener University School of Law. Also a member of the American Trial Lawyers Association, the Pennsylvania Association of Trial Lawyers, the Pennsylvania Bar Association, and the Chester County Bar Association.[5]
Notable litigation
- Agent Orange Product Liability Litigation: The Mayerson Law Offices, P.C., with Sgt. Charles E. Hartz as their principal client, filed the first Agent Orange class action lawsuit in Pennsylvania for the injuries that American soldiers in Vietnam suffered through exposure to toxic dioxins in the Agent Orange defoliant.[15] Attorney Hy Mayerson co-wrote the brief that certified the Agent Orange Product Liability action as a class action, the largest ever filed as of its filing.[16] Hartz’s deposition was one of the first taken in America for the purpose of preserving testimony at trial, as it was understood that Hartz would not live to see the trial because of the brain tumor that began to develop while he was a member of Tiger Force, Special Forces, and LRRPs in Vietnam.[5][17][18] The firm also located and supplied critical research to the Veterans’ lead expert Dr. Ronald A. Codario, M.D., including approximately one hundred articles from toxicology journals dating back more than a decade, as well as data about where herbicides had been sprayed, what the effects of dioxin had been on animals and humans, and every accident in factories where herbicides were produced or dioxin was a contaminant of some chemical reaction,[19] as documented in the book Waiting for an Army to Die: The Tragedy of Agent Orange
- Fork Truck Safety and other Unreasonably Dangerous Product Litigation: Attorney Hy Mayerson chaired the American Trial Lawyer section on Industrial and Agricultural Equipment for over a decade, providing seminars and lectures to other litigation attorneys on how to require manufacturers to make safer equipment by incorporating into the design and every future fork truck an "operator protection system", including side restraints, seat belts with better and amplified operating instructions[20], and more substantial warnings about possible hazards.[21] This effort on behalf of operators and consumers resulted in manufacturers' incorporation of operator restraint systems, amplified and improved instructions, and firmer and clearer warnings on forklifts, reducing deaths in the United States associated with forklift accidents from an average of over 100 per year to zero rollover fatalities or serious injury of an operator during a rollover where a restraint system was installed, whether or not the operator was using a seatbelt restraint.[5][22]
- Corporate and Professional Personal Injury and Workplace Safety Litigation: Litigation including automobile manufacture and/or distribution of unreasonably dangerous products, careless driving, improper and misleading service work, and medical malpractice litigation.
- Bad Faith Litigation and Unreasonable Insurance Company Handling of Losses: The Mayerson Law Offices, P.C., has litigated against insurance carriers who act unreasonably against policy holders, or act to unreasonably delay payment of justifiable losses.[5][23]
Offices
See also
References
- ^ Mayerson.com
- ^ pacaraccident.blogspot.com
- ^ [1]
- ^ Brandimarti v. Caterpillar Tractor Co.
- ^ a b c d e f g [2]
- ^ Habecker v. Clark Equipment Co.
- ^ Sketch of Vincent Township (PMHB, Vol. XXXIV (1910), January, April & July editions), Frederick Sheeder, 1845
- ^ Vincent Mennonite Cemetery at RootsWeb
- ^ The Mercury, Pottstown PA, March 23, 1976: Pottstown Mercury
- ^ [3]
- ^ Control Not a Deciding Factor in Apparent Manufacturer Finding: sdma.com
- ^ Philadelphia Legal Intelligencer
- ^ Wilcox, Fred. Waiting for an Army to Die: The Tragedy of Agent Orange. ISBN 9780932020680.
- ^ Merion Mercy Academy at Portfolio.com
- ^ Dying Veteran May Speak From Beyond The Grave In Court: Lakeland Ledger
- ^ CBS Evening News
- ^ Earth: The Agent Orange Mystery: Omni Magazine
- ^ Pottstown Mercury
- ^ Questia: Waiting for an Army to Die: The Tragedy of Agent Orange by Fred A. Wilcox; Seven Locks Press, 1999
- ^ American Machinist
- ^ National Safety News, June 1982
- ^ Habecker v. Clark Equipment Co.
- ^ Melissa Sepos: "Verdicts & Settlements", The Legal Intelligencer-Philadelphia; Wednesday July 18 2001
External links