Thomas Kline

Thomas R. Kline has practiced personal injury law for more than four decades, earning recognition as "one of the nation's most prominent trial lawyers" by The Philadelphia Inquirer. He has achieved hundreds of seven- and eight-figure jury verdicts and settlements. In 2019, he secured verdicts of $41 million, $80 million, and $8 billion in medical device and pharmaceutical cases. In 2023, he won a $175 million verdict in a Roundup cancer case, followed by a $2.25 billion verdict in another Roundup trial in 2024. As chair of the Plaintiffs Management Committee for the Amtrak 188 multidistrict litigation, Kline established a $265 million settlement program for injured passengers and deceased victims' families, believed to be the largest railway settlement in history. U.S. District Judge Legrome D. Davis noted Kline's leadership was "exceptional." He currently chairs the plaintiffs steering committee for the 2016 Hoboken train crash and represents victims among the 114 injured. Kline's largest career verdict came in 2019: an $8 billion punitive damages award by a Philadelphia jury against Johnson & Johnson and Janssen Pharmaceuticals for Risperdal, an antipsychotic drug promoted off-label for children, which was linked to gynecomastia in boys. In January 2024, Kline won a $2.25 billion verdict comprising $250 million in compensatory damages and $2 billion in punitive damages against Monsanto for a 49-year-old Pennsylvania man diagnosed with cancer after using Roundup over twenty years. Months earlier, he obtained a $175 million verdict—including $150 million in punitive damages—against Monsanto for an 83-year-old Philadelphia man with cancer from Roundup use. In May 2019, Kline secured an $80 million verdict against Johnson & Johnson for a Media, Pennsylvania woman injured by a surgically implanted vaginal mesh device. The award included $30 million compensatory and $50 million punitive damages, representing the largest compensatory award nationally for a vaginal mesh case at that time. Earlier that year, he won a $41 million verdict for another Pennsylvania woman injured by three vaginal mesh devices manufactured by Ethicon Inc., including $25 million in punitive damages. In 2018, Kline obtained the largest settlement with the Archdiocese of Philadelphia in a child sexual abuse case, representing the family of Sean McIlmail, a former altar boy abused by a priest. In 2017, Kline negotiated a $4.4 million settlement with Philadelphia for a deliveryman shot by plainclothes officers who mistook him for a criminal suspect. The settlement was a city record and among the nation's largest involving police incidents, and included new regulations and training protocols for plainclothes officers. Kline has been honored as the No. 1 attorney in Pennsylvania for 23 consecutive years (2004-2026) by Super Lawyers, an achievement unmatched nationally. He received the 2019 Philadelphia Medical Malpractice "Lawyer of the Year" designation from Best Lawyers and has been selected among the nation's best lawyers since 1995. In 2020, he received the "Best of the Bar" award from the Philadelphia Business Journal. He is a member and past president of the Inner Circle of Advocates, described by The Washington Post as "a select group of 100 of the nation's most celebrated trial lawyers." In 2016, Kline received the Michael A. Musmanno Award, the highest honor from the Philadelphia Trial Lawyers Association. He appears in the National Law Journal's "Winning Hall of Fame" as one of fewer than 100 lawyers with significant verdicts and long-term success records. The Philadelphia Inquirer's Editorial Board described him as "the high-powered plaintiffs' attorney... who has won a number of eight-figure awards for clients injured or killed due to negligence or incompetence by businesses, government agencies, and nonprofit health-care providers." He received the Lifetime Achievement Award from The Legal Intelligencer for shaping law in Pennsylvania and impacting the legal profession. In 2015, Kline was elected to the American Law Institute, founded in 1923 as the leading independent organization clarifying and modernizing U.S. law. The Philadelphia Business Journal named him among the region's most influential people, including its "Power 100" list for 2018. On September 7, 2022, Kline donated $50 million to his alma mater, Duquesne University School of Law, which was renamed the Thomas R. Kline School of Law. In 2014, he gave a $50 million gift to Drexel University's law school, now named the Thomas R. Kline School of Law, including the former Beneficial Savings Fund Society building in Center City, now the Thomas R. Kline Institute of Trial Advocacy. In 2012, Kline and partner Shanin Specter donated to Penn Carey Law School, which dedicated its newly constructed courtroom as the Kline & Specter Courtroom. Kline grew up in Pennsylvania's anthracite coal region, son of a dress factory manager. He earned his undergraduate degree from Albright College and was honored with a Distinguished Alumni Award. Before law school, Kline worked as a middle school teacher teaching sixth-grade social studies. He earned a master's degree in American History from Lehigh University and completed all doctoral coursework and examinations. He attended Duquesne University School of Law, graduating with the Distinguished Student Award. He served as law clerk to Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice Thomas W. Pomeroy. In 2008, he received Duquesne's Distinguished Alumni Award and was inducted in 2019 as a member of the Century Club of Distinguished Duquesne University Alumni, the highest honor bestowed on graduates. Kline's legal practice flourished first at The Beasley Firm in Philadelphia, then at his own firm opened in 1995 with Shanin Specter. In the early 1980s, he won a $5.1 million verdict against Dalkon Shield manufacturers, then the largest compensatory verdict in the United States for that defective birth control device. In a 16-year legal struggle against Merrell Dow, Kline won multi-million dollar punitive damage awards twice. In 2013, Kline achieved a $42.9 million verdict—one of Pennsylvania's largest medical malpractice verdicts—for a child born with cerebral palsy after substandard hospital treatment. A month earlier, he secured an $11.6 million settlement for a University of Pennsylvania student rendered paraplegic after falling through a raised skylight at an off-campus residence. Other notable cases include a $33.1 million jury award in Welteroth v. Spectrascan for an estate involving late breast cancer diagnosis; $15.2 million in the Sears case for a child with brain injury during heart surgery; $15 million in the Borkowski case for a Downs Syndrome child injured during heart surgery; $19 million for a baby born with disabilities in drug product liability; $10.5 million settlement for a teenager's family killed during restraint at a treatment center; $6 million verdict (largest in Indiana County) in the Chichy case for a baby injured during delivery; a multi-million dollar Montgomery County verdict in the Lackman case for a woman who died of breast cancer after mammogram misreading; $40.5 million settlement for six killed and others injured in Village Green apartment explosion in Hatboro, Pennsylvania; $36.4 million settlement with Motiva Enterprises for an oil refinery worker's death; $29.6 million settlement for three women killed and others injured in Pier 34 Delaware River collapse; $10 million in the Cozzolino case where a kindergarten student was killed by a collapsing lunch table; $18.5 million verdict in the Keen case for a 12-year-old girl with heart damage from medical error; and $14 million verdict in the Zauflik case for a teenager whose leg was amputated after a school bus accident. Kline has prominently represented victims in the Pennsylvania State University child sexual abuse matter and has become a national spokesman, appearing in newspaper stories and television coverage reaching a cumulative audience exceeding 100 million. In 2011, he obtained a $1.8 million settlement against an unlicensed psychotherapist who had sex with a teenage patient, with actual payment expected to reach $3.8 million pending insurance litigation. The settlement included a mandated public admission and apology by the Allentown therapist. In March 2017, Kline, along with Nadeem Bezar and Emily Marks, filed suit against a Northeast Philadelphia motel owner/operator and management company on behalf of a teenage girl enslaved there and forced into sexual acts. This was the first lawsuit filed under Pennsylvania's 2014 human trafficking statute. In 2013, Kline obtained a $5 million award for an undocumented worker crushed to death by a collapsing excavation site, among the largest verdicts for undocumented workers. In 2010, he secured a $5.2 million verdict for the family of a Philadelphia woman who died from internal bleeding following a routine procedure after doctors failed to treat the condition timely. Kline obtained a $10.5 million federal settlement for a teenager who died at a Tennessee treatment center after being placed in a restraint hold. He currently represents the family of a young girl victimized in a kidnap and sexual assault case in Philadelphia. He advocated for improved school policies in testimony before City Council. He also represented Joaquin Rivera's family after Rivera died in a hospital emergency room while waiting for assistance. In 2009, Kline achieved a $3.2 million settlement for the husband of a Wayne County woman killed when her car struck farming equipment that broke loose from a truck, believed to be the largest ever in that rural county. In 2008, he won a $5.5 million verdict for the family of an 18-year-old man fatally shot while working as a parking lot attendant at Hahnemann University Hospital, where safety had not improved after an armed robbery at the same booth twelve days earlier. After the case, Kline publicly sought to improve parking facility safety. Additionally, Kline was a key player in Vioxx litigation, serving on the Plaintiff's Steering Committee directing federal MDL proceedings against Merck & Co. He took testimony from top Merck executives and independent scientists that became key evidence at trial in numerous multi-million dollar awards and helped lead to a $4.85 billion settlement benefiting hundreds of Kline & Specter clients. Kline has been a prolific continuing legal education teacher. Recent programs include "A Conversation with Tom Kline," a major event at the PaTLA July 2011 annual meeting, and "Tom Kline's Real World in the Courtroom: Real Testimony, Real Trials" at Drexel's law school. In April 2017, he moderated a Philadelphia District Attorney Candidates' Forum at the packed Kline School of Law auditorium. He delivered the keynote address at the Bench-Bar & Annual Conference sponsored by the Philadelphia Bar Association in Atlantic City in October 2011. Kline starred in the latest "Trial as Theatre" series, titled "Bob Dylan: Music, Lyrics and the Law," performed at the Wilma Theater in 2011 and 2014. He is a frequent lecturer at law schools and medical schools. He was an adjunct professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School teaching "Introduction to Trial Advocacy" and has taught at Temple University Beasley School of Law, Jefferson Medical College, and Thomas Jefferson University. In 2013, he delivered the Edward J. Ross Memorial Lecture in Litigation at Temple Law School. Kline has taught complex litigation at The National Judicial College in Reno, Nevada, and addressed the Conference of State Trial Judges at its annual meetings in 2010 and 2013 on Medical Malpractice. He has been featured in the Masters on Trial seminar and is the producer, director, writer, and performer in the one-man show "Trial As Theatre" as well as The Modern Trial and Tom Kline on Technology. Kline authored "Robert C. Grier: Jacksonian Unionist" and numerous published articles. He wrote an op-ed for The Philadelphia Inquirer titled "Immunity Is Bad Medicine." With Chip Becker and Shanin Specter, he authored a chapter on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court and medical malpractice in "The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania -- Life and Law in the Commonwealth, 1684-2017." From 1989 through 2011, Kline served U.S. Senators Specter, Heinz, Santorum, and Casey on the Federal Judicial Nominating Commission for the United States District Court for Pennsylvania federal courts. The 14-member citizen merit selection panel screened judicial applicants and made recommendations to the state's senators, who then recommended candidates to the President. Kline served as Chairman of the Eastern District panel from 1998 to 2010. By 2011, every active USDC ED Pa. member had been screened and recommended by the Commission. Kline is licensed to practice in Pennsylvania and New York and is admitted before the U.S. Supreme Court, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, and other federal courts. He is listed in Best Lawyers in America and the Bar Register of Preeminent Lawyers, rated AV-Preeminent by Martindale-Hubbell, and is a member of the American College of Trial Lawyers and the International Academy of Trial Lawyers, which limits membership to 500 U.S. attorneys recommended by peers and trial judges for outstanding skills, abilities, character, and integrity. He was selected for the 2007 edition of World's Leading Product Liability Lawyers and is listed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce as one of the most "highly respected plaintiff's lawyers" in their October 2013 report "The New Lawsuit Ecosystem." Kline serves on the Board of Directors of the Philadelphia Trial Lawyers Association, chairs the Board of Advisors of the Thomas R. Kline School of Law at Drexel University, and is a member of the Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees of Drexel University. He previously served as a member of the Board of Advisors of WXPN, the University of Pennsylvania public radio station. In 2014, United Cerebral Palsy of Philadelphia & Vicinity honored him with the Life Without Limits Award. Kline is an avid Philadelphia sports fan often found behind home plate at Phillies games and courtside at Sixers games. He is a recreational squash player and continues bowling as a league bowler since his teenage years. Kline has appeared on more than 1,000 television news programs and every major national network, including ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, CNN, ESPN, MSNBC, and programs such as World News Tonight, Nightline, Today, Good Morning America, Anderson Cooper 360, and Piers Morgan Tonight. He has been featured or quoted in hundreds of newspapers and magazines, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Newsweek, and People.