eather L. Kaplan has been recognized as among the top young attorneys practicing in Pennsylvania. She currently handles medical malpractice cases and previously worked on pharmaceutical litigation, including the highly successful cases against the makers of the harmful painkiller Vioxx and the diet drug Fen-Phen.
Kaplan started in the complex mass tort legal
field with a Philadelphia-New York firm involved with
environmental and consumer-oriented litigation. In early
2003, she left that firm to
join Kline & Specter.
Kaplan was selected from among thousands of attorneys for inclusion in Pennsylvania Super Lawyers — Rising Stars, a listing which includes the top 2.5 percent of attorneys in the state 40 years old or younger or who have been practicing less than 10 years.
Kaplan spent more than six years
working on cases involving diet
drugs such as Fen-Phen and Redux, popular diet drugs in the 1990s that were linked
to heart valve abnormalities.
The Mass Tort Department at Kline & Specter won substantial settlements in Fen-Phen and Redux cases
as well as those involving two other widely used medications, Baycol and Phenylpropanolamine,
or PPA.
Kaplan was also part of the legal
team working on cases against Bayer A.G., the maker of
Baycol, a cholesterol-reducing drug that was removed from
the U.S. market by Bayer after it was associated with
a number of deaths due to rhabdomyolysis, a muscle disorder
that can lead to renal failure.
She also played an integral role in
lawsuits targeting PPA,
a drug once contained in more than 400 products, including
over-the-counter cold remedies such as Alka-Seltzer Plus,
Contac and Dimetapp. After decades of use, PPA was linked
to an increased risk of stroke, particularly in women.
Kaplan also handled cases involving the prescription pain relievers Vioxx, Bextra, and Celebrex which were linked to an increased incidence of heart attacks; the herbal supplement Ephedra, also believed to have side
effects dangerous to the heart; and atypical antipsychotic drugs such as
Zyprexa, Risperdal, Seroquel and Geodon, which were associated with
reported cases of diabetes. The Vioxx case resulted in a $4.85 billion settlement with manufacturer Merck & Co.
Kaplan earned her B.S. from Arizona
State University in 1993 and her J.D. from the City University
of New York School of Law in 1997. She is licensed
to practice law in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. She is
a member of the Philadelphia Bar Association, the Pennsylvania
Bar Association, the American Association for Justice,
Tau Epsilon Rho Law Society, the Pennsylvania Association for Justice and the Philadelphia Trial Lawyers Association.
Kaplan works with the Philadelphia Volunteers for the Indigent Program with the Residential Mortgage Foreclosure Diversion Program and she is a volunteer with the AIDS Law Project of Pennsylvania.
To contact Heather Kaplan, email her at Heather.Kaplan@KlineSpecter.com |
