Mark Hoffman

Mark A. Hoffman, M.S., M.D., J.D., LL.M., M.B.E., a partner at Kline & Specter, practices in the areas of catastrophic injury litigation, product liability, pharmaceutical litigation, and other complex personal injury cases, as well as personal medical malpractice defense on behalf of physicians. His expertise has helped achieve significant legal victories in a number of high-profile cases.

Dr. Hoffman has been named among the top attorneys in Pennsylvania by the independent rating service Super Lawyers.

Among his earlier cases, Dr. Hoffman worked with Tom Kline in 2001 on the case of Delores Spraggans, a 67-year-old woman who suffered a stroke after a catheter was placed in the wrong blood vessel. A jury found Allegheny University Hospital liable and handed down a $2 million verdict, an unusually large award for a patient who was elderly and already suffering serious health problems.

Dr. Hoffman again teamed with Kline in 2003, this time obtaining a $2.9 million verdict in Delaware County for the wife of Dr. Marc Ebel, a gastroenterologist who suffered internal bleeding at Crozer-Chester Medical Center following a lymph node biopsy. Doctors failed to treat the cause of the bleeding in time and Ebel died.

Dr. Hoffman has worked on a litany of other cases at Kline & Specter that have resulted in favorable jury verdicts and significant settlements, including cases in New Hampshire and North Carolina. He served on the Science Committee of the Vioxx Multi-District Litigation, and was a member of the core group which developed the scientific foundation concerning prostaglandin and prostacyclin effects of this medication, and its relationship to heart attack and stroke.

Most recently, Dr. Hoffman worked with Tom Kline in the highly publicized case of Omega Leach, a Philadelphia teenager who died after being placed in a restraint hold at a Tennessee treatment center, which settled for $10.5 million in February 2010. (See story) In November 2009, he was lead counsel in the case of Abena Kyei v. various doctors and a nurse at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, which tried to a $1.3 million verdict. The case involved the death of a 5-month-old baby with complex congenital heart disease. (See story). And in March 2008, Dr. Hoffman was lead counsel in a medical malpractice case in which a patient died because of mistakes made by a doctor while performing a cardiac catheterization procedure. A Scranton jury awarded $700,000 in the case. (See story).

Dr. Hoffman received his undergraduate degree with honors from Amherst College, an M.S. degree in biology and biochemistry from Tulane University, and an M.D. degree from Columbia University. He then completed his general surgery residency at Harvard University in Boston, followed by a two-year fellowship in neonatal and pediatric surgery at the Hospital for Sick Children and the University of Toronto. Dr. Hoffman then went on to complete a solid organ transplantation fellowship at Cambridge University in Cambridge, England.

Prior to attending law school, Dr. Hoffman practiced as an academic liver and kidney transplant surgeon and general pediatric surgeon at Tufts University in Boston, and more recently, at the University of Pennsylvania. He has extensive experience in the areas of pediatric trauma and trauma surgery, hepato-biliary surgery, and the surgery of complex congenital gastrointestinal and airway malformations. He was a staff member of the Kiwanis Pediatric Trauma Institute in Boston, a major pediatric trauma center with world-wide recognition in the care of catastrophic pediatric injuries. Dr. Hoffman also served in the U.S. Army Medical Corps during Desert Shield and Storm and rose to the rank of colonel in the Army. His last assignment prior to leaving the Army was as a Military Academy Liaison Officer (MALO) to the United States Military Academy at West Point. Dr. Hoffman has published extensively in the areas of pediatric trauma, pediatric hepato-biliary disease, and pediatric transplantation.

Dr. Hoffman received his J.D. degree from the University of Pennsylvania School of Law, and in May 2006 completed a master's degree in bioethics at University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. He previously graduated with honors from the LL.M. Program in Trial Advocacy at Temple University’s Beasley School of Law, where he currently teaches in that program. Dr. Hoffman also serves as Assistant Professor of Surgery at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, MD.

Dr. Hoffman’s broad areas of medical interest include transplantation immunology and xenotransplantation, complex congenital diseases of the gastrointestinal tract, gastroesophageal reflux disease in neurologically injured children, hepato-biliary surgery, ethical issues of health care delivery and resource allocation, and legal and moral theories of responsibility, causation and evidence law. He has authored or co-authored more than 50 journal articles, 11 book chapters, and one book on congenital liver disease titled Current Controversies in Biliary Atresia. He has presented his laboratory and clinical research at national and international medical conferences and society meetings, and continues to actively speak at medical meetings on topics of tort law and issues of medical malpractice. He has given more than 50 invited lectures and presentations. More recently, Dr. Hoffman has been an invited speaker and visiting professor at the University of Illinois (Peoria) Department of Surgery, and at the University of Miami Children's Hospital.

Dr. Hoffman is a Fellow of the American College of Legal Medicine, the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada, the American College of Surgeons, the American Society of Transplant Surgeons, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the American Pediatric Surgical Association. He is a lifetime member of the American Association of Military Surgeons.

Dr. Hoffman is licensed to practice in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York. He is a member of the Pennsylvania Association for Justice, the Philadelphia Trial Lawyers Association and the American Association for Justice.

To contact Mark Hoffman, email him at

News Featuring Mark Hoffman:

• Hoffman, Jones win $1.2M verdict in baby death case, The Legal Intelligencer 112009