Profile: Thomas R. Kline:
Keep it simple and human

Tom Kline has a history of making history in the Pennsylvania courts by securing record verdicts for his clients in complex cases.

In addition Kline, whose specialty is catastrophic-injury claims, has been involved in cases that helped develop civil litigation and product-liability law in the state.

In three noteworthy cases, Kline, a partner in Kline & Specter, P.C., of Philadelphia, represented plaintiffs whose economic damages represented only a small percentage - in one case, zero percent - of large jury awards.

Most recently, a jury awarded $33.1 million in compensatory damages to a cancer victim and her husband. The award, the highest ever in Pennsylvania for medical malpractice, included just $1.1 million in actual economic claims. (See the story elsewhere in this newsletter.)

In Blum v. Merrell Dow, a drug-liability case involving a birth defect, the jury's 1987 $2 million award was reversed on appeal, but when the case was retried in 1994, the award zoomed to $19.2 million. The figure included a mere $200,000 for past and future medical expenses, but it allowed $15 million for punitive damages and set a state record for a personal-injury verdict.

And in Reif v. A.H. Robins Co. in 1983, Kline represented a woman who sought nothing in economic damages for a Dalkon Shield injury. The jury awarded her $5.15 million.

The three cases show that juries recognize losses aren't limited to tangible costs, Kline said.

"Juries are convinced that the real damages are not always economic but rather are those things that constitute the true fabric of life. And I try to reduce to its simplest terms the real meaning of the claims for such things as pain and suffering and loss of life's pleasures," he said.

"There is no formula for doing so. It is a matter of presenting such a claim for what it is and on very human terms," he added.

Kline started making a name for himself even before he began practicing law. He received the Distinguished Student Award from Duquesne University, where he earned his law degree. He also holds degrees from Albright College and Lehigh University. He is a member of the American College of Trial Lawyers, serves on the faculty at Temple University School of Law and is a Master of the Bench of the University of Pennsylvania Law School American Inn of Court.

Contact Thomas R. Kline at:
Kline & Specter, P.C.
1525 Locust St. - The Nineteenth Floor
Philadelphia, Pa. 19102
Phone: (215) 772-1000, Fax: (215) 772-1359
E-mail: Kline_Specter@msn.com