n 1937, Harry Specter, a peddler, was driving his Chevy pickup when a defective spindle bolt broke and caused the truck to flip over. His arm was crushed in the accident and he was left permanently disabled.
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Shanin Specter during a break in the White v. Ford trial in federal court in Reno, Nev. |
Harry got a $500 settlement for his injury. More than six decades later, his grandson, Shanin Specter, a nationally recognized trial attorney, would sue a major car company — also over a manufacturing defect in a pick-up truck - with a far different result.
Specter has waged an epic battle against the Ford Motor Co. on behalf of the family of Walter White, a three-year-old boy who was run over and killed when the parking brake in his father's F-350 spontaneously disengaged. Specter has won two verdicts in White v. Ford — for $153 million and $52 million — and continues to litigate this case, which is scheduled for a third trial in June 2008.
Specter has won many verdicts for catastrophically injured people, including nine which were in eight or nine figures. Of those, four were medical malpractice cases, two involved a defective product, two arose from improperly maintained premises and one resulted from a motor vehicle accident. (See below.)
Specter, who earned his law degree
from the University of Pennsylvania in 1984 and an LL.M.
with First Honors from Cambridge University, has compiled
a lengthy record of professional accomplishments.
Specter is the 2007 recipient of the Pennsylvania Trial Lawyers Association (now the Pennsylvania Association for Justice) highest honor, the Milton D. Rosenberg Award "in recognition of those qualities of leadership, service and devotion to the Association's cause."The National Law Journal selected Specter as one of the top ten litigators in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, while other organizations also have named him as among the best attorneys in the state and in the nation.
In his career, Specter has won many widely publicized cases. In 1995, six months after opening
his firm with partner Tom Kline, he won a $24.25
million jury verdict for a little girl left severely brain
damaged in a swimming pool accident. (See Weightman
v. National Realty Corp.) At the time, it was the largest compensatory
verdict ever awarded in Pennsylvania. Two years
later, in Sparber
v. DuPont, Specter won a Delaware-record $19.9
million verdict against a hospital after a 15-year-old
patient was accosted by a visitor, the attack resulting
in catastrophic nerve damage. In 1998 Specter won a $6.8 million verdict for a man injured in a motorcycle
accident while wearing a defective helmet. (See Wandel
v. Bell Sports, Inc.)
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As the jury deliberates, Specter awaits the verdict in White v. Ford. |
Most recently, in April 2008, Specter obtained a $35 million preliminarily approved settlement with 16 defendants in the Bridgeport Fire case. Along with three colleagues at the firm -- Jason L. Pearlman, Kila B. Baldwin and Robert F. Englert, Jr. -- Specter represented more than 100 businesses and individuals in the class action for losses suffered in the massive fire that destroyed the Continental Business Center in Bridgeport, Pa. in 2001. A five-week trial was in the midst of jury deliberations when the final defendant agreed to settle. (See Bridgeport)
Specter, known for his tenacity and
an impeccable attention to detail, has set records in
other medical-malpractice cases. In 2000, he won
the then-largest medical malpractice verdict in Pennsylvania
history for David Caruso,
a 20-year-old who was left in a near-vegetative state
after receiving negligent care at a Philadelphia hospital.
Specter demonstrated his ability to captivate a courtroom
in that case, giving a closing speech in which he spoke
for Caruso in the first-person, as if he were the young
man who would never be able to again enjoy life's simple
pleasures. Many in the courtroom were moved to tears,
including members
of the jury, which awarded $49.6 million.
Among his most well known cases,
Specter in 2001 won an unusually large settlement in a
suit involving a defective BB gun that badly brain damaged
and led to the death of a teenage boy. The Mahoney
case, and Specter's investigation of the gun, resulted
in an exposé on the ABC program 20/20 featuring Specter
and led the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission to
seek the recall of 7.4 million defective Daisy BB guns.
In another case, this one involving
the death of a pedestrian run down by a speeding Philadelphia police car, Specter won not only monetary
compensation for his client but also important reform
for Philadelphia citizens. The Gillyard/Rich
case resulted in a $2.45 million settlement against the
city under the Civil Rights Act, sparking the police commissioner
to mandate extensive training and make driving rule changes
to improve police and civilian safety.
Among Specter's more recent cases:
 In 2003, Specter, along with Andy Youman, won a $20 million compensatory verdict
for 19-year-old Hugh Gallagher IV, who was catastrophically injured when nurses at Temple
University Hospital failed to respond in time to his blocked
airway. After the verdict, Specter prevailed in two appeals before Pennsylvania Superior Court, and the verdict was upheld finally — with interest — when the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case in November 2007.
In 2004, Specter tried a case
in Luzerne County in which he won a $19.1 million verdict for a Hazleton woman struck by a careless driver
while she was working as a flagger at a construction site.
Teresa McManamon suffered serious injuries that left her unable to care
for herself or her three children. The verdict was paid in full in 2007 following appeal.
In a retrial of the punitive damages
only in the White
v. Ford case, Specter in 2004 again
won a major verdict against Ford following a two-week
trial in Reno, Nev. The jury awarded $52 million. The verdict was later reversed and the case is to be tried for a third time in June 2008.
Later in 2004, Specter won a jury verdict
for Nicholas Woolfolk,
a two-year-old boy who fell from a window at his Philadelphia
apartment complex after a screen popped out of its casing.
The child suffered brain damage and blindness in one eye.
Because of a pre-verdict agreement, the child received $12.25 million.
And a few months later, Specter, along with Youman and Lisa Dagostino, won a $7.8 million
jury verdict for the family of a baby who suffered brain
damage after being improperly resuscitated after birth,
going nine minutes without a breath or a heartbeat. The verdict was paid in full. The
medical malpractice verdict in Briggs
v. UPMC Shadyside Hospital set a record for a
medical malpractice case in Allegheny County. This record was broken by Specter in 2007.
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The withdrawal from the market of the prescription painkiller Vioxx led to a major role for Specter in this national litigation. In 2005, Specter was selected to take the depositions of Merck CEO Ray Gilmartin, Merck Research Laboratories President Peter Kim, Merck former Senior Vice-President Alan Neis and Merck Senior Biostatistician Deborah Shapiro. Specter's examination of Shapiro was held by New Jersey Superior Court Judge Carol Higbee to be the only evidence sufficient to support a punitive damages verdict against Merck. (View Kim deposition excerpts [1] [2]. View Shapiro deposition excerpts [1] [2].)
In 2006, Specter, along with Kline & Specter lawyer Don Matusow tried Lee/Egan v. Abington Memorial Hospital. This case concerned a newborn with a highly treatable eye condition (Retinopathy of Prematurity) that went untreated because the hospital and several physicians failed to give the newborn, Emmitt Lee, a follow-up eye exam. The missed exam led to Emmitt's total blindness. The jury awarded $20 million to compensate Emmitt, which was the highest personal injury award in Montgomery County history and the largest medical malpractice award in the history of the Philadelphia suburbs (See The Lee Case.) The verdict was appealed but paid in full in 2007.
In 2007, Specter and Youman tried a case for five days, resulting in a very substantial settlement against the University of Pittsburgh (see Pratt).In this case, campus police failed to timely revive a student who had collapsed in class, resulting in her suffering severe brain damage. In addition to a confidential monetary settlement, the university agreed to hire a medical director for their police department, provide their police officers with quarterly refresher courses on CPR and the use of automatic external defibrillators (AED) and twice annually test their officers' proficiency in CPR and AED use. After the case was settled, Specter made a presentation to a symposium at the University of Pennsylvania School of Law on
the use of video in the courtroom. He played the videotape of the day-in-the-life of Erica Pratt, which was narrated live at the symposium by her mother, Diane Pratt, as part of a mock direct examination. (View the presentation)
In a defamation case, Specter, with partner Tom Kline, represented noted Philadelphia criminal defense attorney Richard Sprague in a suit filed against radio personality Howard Eskin. Eskin alleged that Sprague had paid off a witness to change his testimony in the Allan Iverson prosecution. The case was settled in 2004 with Eskin making a public apology and being suspended from the radio show for 30 days. His employer, Infinity Broadcasting, also agreed to pay "substantial" compensation to Sprague. (Click here for more on the story.)
Specter is listed in Best Lawyers in America and is AV-rated in Martindale-Hubbell. He also was singled out or selected for inclusion by the following organizations:
- Super Lawyers, which for four straight years named Specter as among the best lawyers in Pennsylvania based on ballots sent to 39,000 attorneys in the state and review by a special committee. In 2007, Specter for the second time was named among the Top 10 attorneys in Pennsylvania by Super Lawyers.
- Lawdragon, the legal services information firm, which named Specter as among the best 500 attorneys in the nation from a list of nominees that included trial lawyers, academics, prosecutors, defense attorneys and judges.
- The International Academy of Trial Lawyers, an organization that limits U.S. membership to 500 attorneys recommended by their peers and trial judges for outstanding skills and ability as well as excellent character and integrity.
- The American College of Trial Lawyers, which selects the top 1 percent of trial lawyers from the United States and Canada based on mastery of trial advocacy and careers marked by the highest standards of ethical conduct and professionalism.
- The 2007 edition of World's Leading Product Liability Lawyers, which selects "only the best individuals" from more than 60 jurisdictions worldwide, naming Specter a "pre-eminent practitioner."
Specter served as a member of a hearing
committee on the Disciplinary Board of the Supreme Court
of Pennsylvania from 1989 to 1994 and as
a chairman from
1994 to 1995. He was a member of the Civil Procedural
Rules Committee of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania from1995
to 2001. Specter was the Governor's appointee to the Pennsylvania
Medical Professional Liability Insurance Catastrophe Loss
Fund Advisory Board, a position he held from 1997 to 2002.
Specter graduated with honors in political
science from Haverford College in 1980. While at Haverford he won the Harry S Truman Scholarship Award, a national scholarship awarded to one sophomore from each state who is regarded to have the best potential for a career in public service. Specter earned
his law degree at the University of Pennsylvania Law School,
where he now teaches "Introduction to Trial Advocacy." He earned his Masters in Law at Cambridge University (First Honors).
Specter is admitted to practice in the U. S. Supreme Court, the Third and Ninth Circuit Courts of Appeal, the U.S. District Courts for the Eastern, Middle and Western Districts of Pennsylvania and the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.
Specter is an avid squash player. In July 2005 he played for the United States team in the Maccabi Games, the Olympic-style event held in Israel every four years. He won a gold medal at the games, along with other members of the United States' 45-49 team.
Specter and other lawyers at Kline & Specter are very active in the community. (See Charities.)
Specter is also a baseball fan and is interested in the intercession between baseball and the law. (Read his Aug. 9, 2007 Op-Ed piece on Barry Bonds in The Philadelphia Inquirer.)
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Shanin Specter in the news:
More about Shanin Specter’s notable cases:
Medical Malpractice
The Briggs verdict
The Caruso verdict
The Gallagher verdict
The Sparber verdict
Premises Liability
The Weightman verdict
The Woolfolk verdict
Product Liability
The Mahoney settlement
The Wandel verdict
The White verdicts
Automobile Liability
The Gillyard/Rich settlement
The McManamon verdict
The White verdicts
^ Back To The Top
To contact Shanin Specter, email him at
Shanin.Specter@KlineSpecter.com.
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