Andrew Youman

Andrew S. Youman, a partner at Kline & Specter, was assigned to a case that would become renowned when he first joined the firm in 1999. It was the case of Tucker Mahoney, the Bucks County teenager who suffered severe brain damage after a friend shot him in the head with a BB gun the two boys had thought was unloaded.

Youman pursued the possibility that the powerful Daisy air rifle might be defective. It was. The resulting lawsuit, spearheaded by Youman and Shanin Specter, settled for a sizeable sum. The case made national headlines – Specter and Youman appeared on ABC’s 20/20 – and resulted in a federal agency investigation as well as a government lawsuit seeking the recall of 7.4 million of the dangerous guns. Tucker Mahoney died several years after the incident.

Youman was selected as among the top five percent of attorneys in Pennsylvania by Super Lawyers magazine for eight consecutive years (2006-2013), including among the Top 100 in Pennsylvania for 2012, based upon balloting by some 40,000 attorneys and review by a special blue-ribbon panel.

In July 2010, he was appointed by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to the Civil Procedural Rules Committee, which assists the high court in the preparation, revision and administration of the rules of civil procedure for the Common Pleas courts statewide. The panel, established in 1937, is the oldest of the Supreme Court’s rules committees and is made up of 15 lawyers and judges.

In addition to the Mahoney case, Youman has been involved in a number of other major cases, including the $40.5 million settlement over a gas explosion and fire at the Village Green Apartments in Hatboro, Pa., that killed six people and injured six others. Youman worked with Tom Kline in the case, whose settlement was announced Sept. 30, 2004.

In the Gallagher case, Youman again teamed with Specter in obtaining a $20 million jury verdict in October 2003 for a college student who suffered brain damage when hospital staff were slow to respond to his clogged tracheostomy tube. In an unusual action, the jury also awarded punitive damages against Temple University Hospital for altering and concealing medical records in the case.

Youman also helped win a record $7.8 million verdict handed down by a Pittsburgh jury in May 2004 in the case of a baby who suffered brain damage after being improperly resuscitated after childbirth. The infant had gone nine minutes without a heartbeat, resulting in severe permanent injury. The medical malpractice verdict was the largest in Allegheny County history. (See Briggs.)

In a recent case, Youman in May 2011 won a $1.87 million verdict for the estate of a woman who died after an emergency room doctor failed to diagnose her symptoms as carbon monoxide poisoning. Days after her discharge from the ER she was found unconscious in her Cheltenham home, where two other people were found dead. (See story)

The following month, Youman won a $927,000 verdict in Chester County for an Exton woman whose hand was damaged in a medical procedure at Paoli Hospital. The injury curtailed her career plan to perform micro-surgery in researching a cure for Alzheimer’s disease. (See story)

Youman in 2009 won a $7.3 million settlement on behalf of a worker who was rendered a paraplegic after he fell 20 feet from scaffolding that was negligently built at a construction site.

Youman and Specter in 2007 won a substantial settlement against the University of Pittsburgh in a case in which campus police failed to timely revive a student who had collapsed in class. The delay resulted in her suffering severe brain damage (Pratt). In addition to a confidential monetary settlement, the university agreed to hire a medical director for their police department and provide officers with quarterly refresher courses on CPR and the use of automatic external defibrillators.

In 2006, Youman won a $1.2 million verdict in Chester County for a man injured when a truck veered off a roadway and struck tree branches that fell on his head, causing several fractures and resulting in headaches and cognitive deficits. (Derr.)

In November 2004, Youman won a $2 million jury verdict for a construction worker who suffered a severe neck injury in a jobsite mishap. George LePera, of Conshohocken, was hurt when wet concrete was poured onto him from one floor above the area in which he was working.

Youman, a 1992 graduate of Villanova University Law School, has worked on many other cases involving medical malpractice and product liability, including one that led to enactment of Pennsylvania statute. The case involved a baby who was suffocated after his shirt got tangled on the corner post of his crib as he tried to climb out. The baby died. Youman, working with the Danny Foundation, named for a baby boy who died the same way, later helped author and promote legislation that made it a criminal offense to sell or provide cribs that do not meet federal safety standards. The measure, the Pennsylvania Infant Crib Safety Act, was passed by the General Assembly and signed into law by Gov. Tom Ridge in 2000.

Youman, who earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of Wisconsin, is an adjunct faculty member at Villanova University Law School, where he teaches Civil Pre-trial Practice. He also serves as a Board Member of the Public Interest Civil Litigation Fund, which provides funds for indigent litigants in civil cases pending in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

Youman is a member of the Philadelphia Bar Association, the Pennsylvania Association for Justice, the Philadelphia Trial Lawyers Association and the American Association for Justice.

To contact Andy Youman, email him at