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Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Each case is unique and depends on its own facts.
About Tobi Russeck
Tobi A. Russeck is the managing partner of Levy Konigsberg's Philadelphia office and a seasoned trial attorney with over 17 years of litigation experience. She earned her J.D. from Ohio Northern University in 2007 and her LLM from Temple University's Trial Advocacy Program in 2010. She is admitted in Pennsylvania, the U.S. Virgin Islands, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, and multiple U.S. District Courts. She focuses on representing victims of institutional sexual assault and has served as first-chair trial counsel in more than 80 jury trials.
Throughout her career, she has successfully handled more than 1,000 personal injury cases, securing over $25 million in settlements. She previously served as Senior Trial Attorney at a large plaintiff's personal injury firm and as Assistant Attorney General for the U.S. Virgin Islands. She was a founding member of the Crimes Against Children Task Force at the Department of Homeland Security.
Proven verdicts and settlements at Levy Konigsberg LLP
These results are credited to Levy Konigsberg LLP. A result appears under an attorney's own name only when a published source names them as counsel on the case.
A Manhattan jury found in May 2019 that asbestos in Johnson's Baby Powder and Shower to Shower caused Donna Olson's pleural mesothelioma, awarding $25 million in compensatory damages and $300 million in punitive damages, the largest talc verdict in New York history. Jerome H. Block of Levy Konigsberg tried the case. The trial court cut the award to $120 million in November 2020, and on July 19, 2022 the Appellate Division, First Department reversed outright and directed judgment for Johnson & Johnson, holding that the plaintiffs' medical expert never gave a scientific expression of the minimum lifetime exposure needed to cause the disease.
Moshe Maimon of Levy Konigsberg led the trial team that won a $117 million verdict for Stephen Lanzo III, the first jury finding that Johnson & Johnson talc caused a plaintiff's mesothelioma. The New Jersey Appellate Division reversed the judgment in April 2021 over inadmissible expert testimony, and no retrial or final resolution has been publicly reported since, with J&J's talc bankruptcy filings stalling the litigation for years.
A Boston jury awarded $43.1 million on October 12, 2018 to the widow and son of Louis Summerlin, a former brake mechanic and lifelong menthol smoker who died of lung cancer in 2015 at 73, finding R.J. Reynolds' Salem and Kool cigarettes defectively designed and the company guilty of fraud, while clearing Philip Morris and an auto parts distributor. Jerome Block of Levy Konigsberg tried the case with Michael Shepard of Shepard Law. It was the first trial in the country to take a lung cancer claim to verdict against both tobacco and asbestos defendants, and the largest verdict in New England that year.
In the first consolidated multi-plaintiff talc trial, a Middlesex County jury awarded $37.3 million on September 11, 2019 to four people who developed mesothelioma after their parents powdered them with Johnson's Baby Powder as children, and a second jury added $750 million in punitive damages in February 2020, which Judge Ana Viscomi cut to $186.5 million under New Jersey's five-times cap. Moshe Maimon of Levy Konigsberg tried the case with Chris Placitella and Chris Panatier. On October 3, 2023 the Appellate Division reversed every judgment and ordered new trials, holding that the trial court had admitted three plaintiffs' experts without the gatekeeping New Jersey law requires.
A Bergen County jury awarded $30,312,204 in February 2008 to the family of Mark Buttitta, who died of mesothelioma at 50 after breathing asbestos fibers his father carried home from GM parts warehouses and after his own college summers working there. Moshe Maimon of Levy Konigsberg tried the case, and the New Jersey Appellate Division affirmed the full award on April 5, 2010.
Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Each case is unique and depends on its own facts.
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Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Each case is unique and depends on its own facts.