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Blackman Legal - Mass Torts Attorney
PATRICK MCNICHOLAS: My name is Patrick McNicholas. I'm a partner at the law offices of McNicholas and McNicholas. We specialize in civil trial work. We represent primarily plaintiffs in direct actions and mass actions as well as class actions.
I'm proud to have been associated with the Blackman Legal Group for the last several years, where we have handled major personal injury cases, complex cases, and have conducted several civil trials together.
Representative actions would be things such as major personal injuries, which would involve representing an individual in cases such as products liability, medical malpractice, and even in discrimination cases.
In addition to that, we have also engaged in cooperative actions, which involved representing several different plaintiffs at the same time involving one particular accident.
We have extensive civil trial work. And we have extensive experience handling complex litigation, which includes both mass torts as well as class actions.
A mass tort is a case where you bring individual actions on behalf of several or even perhaps ten or hundreds of individual plaintiffs against defendants for a mass disaster causing usually major personal injuries.
A class action is different in that you have a class representative. And you bring a representative action on behalf of hundreds, thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of consumers who have been harmed by, for example, a product or by a manufacturer.
Representative actions would include representing a construction work who was injured on the job when a product failed. He sustained a shattered femur in the accident and as a result could not go back to work. The defendants contended in that case that this was simply a broken leg and that he would recover and offered a de minimus amount of money.
In fact, the client in that case sustained a lifelong injury, could not go back to work, could not produce the type of income he had before, and would deal with lifetime medicals.
As a result of the low offer in that case, we did go to trial and were able to effectuate a recovery which in fact compensated the client for his injury as well as to create a revenue stream which provided for lifetime medical and to compensate him for the lifetime loss he sustained as a result of not being able to go back to work as a construction worker.
With respect to class actions, a representative case would be a case in which we represented consumers throughout the country who were defrauded when a manufacturer of a printer put into the printer what they referred to as a smart chip. The smart chip in fact shut down the printer when the cartridge containing the ink actually had about 20% to 25% left in the cartridge.
As a result, consumers lost millions and millions of dollars. In fact, it was an amount which exceeded $100 million. In that particular case, we were able to make whole every consumer who was defrauded by the printer, the manufacturer of the printer, and were able to effectuate a global recovery for them.
It's important that you know that we are a trial firm representing consumers. We specialize in this area. And we only represent those who are seeking redress against corporations and larger entities. We pride ourselves on professionalism and ethicism and would consider it a privilege if you would allow us to represent you in any matter which you have viewed throughout this presentation. Thank you very much.
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BLACKMAN LEGAL
Mass Torts Attorney
