Paul D. Brandes, Esquire

Paul, an equity partner at Villari, Brandes & Giannone, is a senior litigator and trial attorney for the firm, and heads the firm’s litigation department. He received his college degree in 1985 from Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. After graduating, he worked for two years for the Council on Economic Priorities, a public interest research organization in New York City. There, Paul co-authored two books on nuclear arms control, Security without Star Wars and Banning Nuclear Tests. In 1990, Paul earned his law degree from Temple University School of Law in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. While at Temple, Paul was awarded with membership on the prestigious Moot Court Honor Society and was awarded for best brief in the Polsky Moot Court competition. At the time of graduation, he also received an award for outstanding trial advocacy.

Since graduating law school, Paul has dedicated his career to representing clients who are the victims of personal injury caused by medical malpractice, defective products and catastrophic tractor-trailer and motor vehicle collisions. Among his clients in medical negligence cases are the parents of infants and children who were the victims of birth trauma or who were the victims of medical or nursing negligence during their newborn, toddler or adolescent years. Paul has expanded his practice to representing victims of environmental disasters and toxic torts. He is presently prosecuting a proposed class action lawsuit against the Tennessee Valley Authority regarding the devastating December 22, 2008, coal fly ash spill disaster at TVA’s coal-fired electricity generation plant in Harriman, Tennessee.

Paul’s litigation successes include a $6.4 million settlement in a case against a major trucking firm, where he represented the Estate of a man killed in a tractor-trailer collision on Interstate 76 near King of Prussia, Pennsylvania; a $4.5 million verdict in a medical malpractice case in Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania, which represented the first million dollar personal injury verdict in the County’s history; seven figure verdicts in medical malpractice cases in highly conservative counties in central and western Pennsylvania; and a large number multi-million dollar settlements in birth trauma medical malpractice cases and tractor-trailer collision cases.

Moreover, Paul was instrumental in establishing national legal precedent in tractor-trailer litigation matters, having been counsel for plaintiffs in the 2006 land mark New Jersey Supreme Court ruling in Puckrein v. ATI Transport, Inc. (establishing that a shipper of goods can be held liable for hiring an incompetent independent contractor trucking company/motor carrier which is involved in a subsequent motor vehicle collision). Paul (with his partner, Peter Villari) is also significantly engaged in designing and developing computer software which assists trial lawyers in their visual presentations to juries.

Paul has designed and taught courses on behalf of the Pennsylvania Bar Institute regarding tractor-trailer accident litigation and medical malpractice/birth trauma. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Philadelphia Trial Lawyers Association, the oldest trial lawyer organization in Pennsylvania. He is also an Investigator in the Investigative Division of the Philadelphia Bar Association’s Commission on Judicial Selection and Retention. He is a member of the bars in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York and Washington, D.C., as well as of the Philadelphia County and Montgomery County, Pennsylvania bar associations, the Pennsylvania Association for Justice and the nationally recognized American Association for Justice, including its Birth Trauma Litigation Group.

Paul D. Brandes

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