Joe Dougherty co-hosts The Law Firm of Saltz, Mongelluzi and Bendesky Show with lawyers from one of the most reputable personal injury law firms in the nation.
Since its founding in 1998, Saltz Mongeluzzi & Bendesky has developed a national reputation as one of the country’s most successful personal injury law firms. Led by partner and founder Bob Mongeluzzi, SMB has built upon its initial foundation as the leading Philadelphia firm for worksite injuries and medical malpractice to become a national powerhouse in construction and transportation accidents.
SMB is widely considered to be the go-to law firm in the U.S. for catastrophic construction accidents—particularly those involving building and worksite collapses, and incidents involving cranes and aerial lifts.
Over the last decade, it has also successfully handled several mass casualty events involving transportation, including the 2015 Amtrak train derailment in Philadelphia. Building on that experience, it is currently representing many of the plaintiffs in the 2018 Branson, Missouri duck boat disaster that claimed 17 lives.
With a roster of nationally-known practitioners and formidable financial resources, SMB has taken on some of the country’s most complex, technical, data, and document-intensive cases and won.
In January 2020, Steven G. Wigrizer joined SMB as Chairman of the Medical Malpractice Department. Mr. Wigrizer has been a premiere medical negligence attorney in the region for decades and brings nearly forty (40) years of experience to the team. His sustained success in medical malpractice actions has brought him national acclaim.
In 2017, Mr. Wigrizer served as co-lead counsel with Bob Mongeluzzi in the Philadelphia Salvation Army Thrift Store Collapse trial, which resulted in the historic liability verdict and record-setting settlement. The trial lasted nearly six months, the longest civil trial in Philadelphia history. The $227 million dollar settlement is believed to be the largest in Pennsylvania history.
By way of new litigation and practice areas, Steve recently filed suit on behalf of the City of Coatesville in the groundbreaking Opioid litigation against the manufacturers and distributors of the product. Steve believes that the root cause of the opioid crisis is over prescription, which stems directly from deceptive and misleading information provided to prescribing doctors. At Saltz Mongeluzzi & Bendesky, Steve now serves as the Chairman of the Medical Malpractice group.
We all place tremendous trust and respect in our doctors and hospitals, who we rely upon to protect our most precious possession, our health. Sadly, healthcare has changed in this country. Now many doctors are employed by large healthcare conglomerates and attention to individual patients is waning as more and more physicians are being replaced by PAs and Nurse Practitioners who are not positioned to provide a high level of care. The result is increases in injury and death for which healthcare providers must be held accountable.
Recognizing that members of the public are frequently not well informed about their rights and in an effort to provide the community with updated information about the law and topics of general interest, Steve hosts a television show which appears on Main Line TV as well as Phillycam. The show is called The Leading Question and some of the episodes are available on YouTube. His guests include other attorneys, politicians, and judges as well as members of the public. The show is done entirely as a public service.
Finally, Steve is an active board member in an organization known as PeaceDrums USA. The organization promotes peace, understanding, and mutual respect among individuals of diverse religions and backgrounds in the Middle East through the shared experience of music. While much of the work involves fundraising, Steve performs with his band regularly at the organization’s galas. Steve’s band also performs at charity events around the Delaware Valley throughout the year.
Mary T. Gidaro is a member of the Professional Negligence Team. Mary is a compassionate trial attorney who has successfully litigated and achieved several multimillion-dollar recoveries in complex matters.
In 2017, Jason Weiss was a member of the trial team that, after winning a successful liability verdict, obtained the largest settlement in Pennsylvania history. The $227 Million dollar settlement in the Market Street Collapse case came after the jury found the Salvation Army was 75% responsible, a landmark result not only for his clients, but for Jason’s legal career.