Kline & Specter, PC

A Philadelphia jury found that Monsanto failed to warn that Roundup could cause cancer and awarded John McKivison $2.25 billion. The trial judge later reduced the award to $400 million.

After Amtrak Train 188 derailed in Philadelphia in May 2015, killing eight and injuring more than 200, Kline & Specter's Thomas R. Kline led the plaintiffs' negotiations that produced a $265 million settlement fund for the victims.

A Philadelphia jury found the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania liable for the brain injury a newborn suffered when staff delayed a cesarean section, a $182.7 million verdict that grew to a molded judgment of about $207.6 million, the largest medical malpractice award in Pennsylvania history. Kline & Specter argued and won the appeal, where the Pennsylvania Superior Court affirmed the full $207.6 million judgment in July 2025.

A Philadelphia jury awarded Ernest Caranci $175 million after finding that decades of Roundup use caused his non-Hodgkin lymphoma and that Monsanto failed to warn of the risk. Kline & Specter tried the case, the first Roundup trial in Philadelphia, and the verdict was later upheld on appeal.

A federal jury in Nevada found Ford's pickup parking brake defective and held that the company should have warned owners, returning a verdict near $153 million after three-year-old Walter White was killed by a truck that rolled in the family driveway. Shanin Specter of Kline & Specter tried the case.

A Philadelphia jury found that Ethicon negligently designed the TVT-O pelvic mesh implanted in Susan McFarland of Altoona and returned $120 million, which Kline & Specter called the largest pelvic-mesh verdict reached to that point.

As chair of the plaintiffs' negotiating committee and Liaison Counsel in the Vioxx multidistrict litigation, Russ Herman directed the negotiations that produced a $4.85 billion settlement with Merck resolving approximately 45,000 to 50,000 personal-injury claims.

An Allegheny County jury found West Penn Power negligent for the splice failure that dropped a live 7,200-volt line on Carrie Goretzka in her own backyard. The 2012 verdict reached $109 million. The utility later paid a reported $105 million to drop its appeal.

After an unbraced brick wall toppled during a 2013 Center City demolition and crushed a Salvation Army store, Kline & Specter's Andrew J. Stern secured a $95.6 million award for survivor Mariya Plekan, the largest individual share of a record $227 million settlement.

A Philadelphia jury returned $80 million, including $50 million in punitive damages, against Johnson & Johnson and its Ethicon unit after finding the Prolift transvaginal mesh implanted in Patricia Mesigian was defective and inadequately labeled.