Marilyn McGoldrock – Partner Attorney
Boston, Massachusetts Attorney

My practice area is pharmaceutical and medical device litigation, that’s my primary focus. When I first came to the firm way back when I was doing asbestos like everybody does here. And then the fen-phen litigation hit so I started working on those cases, primarily with David Strouss. And then Dave has moved into and morphed into other complex birth defect litigation, and some toxic exposure litigation, so I took over the pharmaceutical medical device litigation and it has been growing ever since. You’ve probably heard about Vioxx. Fen-phen originally, and now we’re into all kinds of different medications and hips and there’s just a lot of drugs and devices on the market that unfortunately harm people and you know we’re litigating those to the fullest.

The firm has changed over the years. We’ve expanded from not just the asbestos litigation, but we’ve gone into so many other complex areas of litigation, and you know we’re not afraid to take things on, and we’re not afraid to try new practice areas. So it’s exciting in that regard because if there’s something that’s worth litigating and there’s some people who are harmed, my partners are usually wonderful about moving forward with it and taking it on.

But for me when I first came here and I started working on the fen-phen litigation I remember a family who lost their mother to a condition called primary pulmonary hypertension. And it was due to the diet drugs. There was an older son and he had a young wife and young child of his own and they ended up having to take care of the siblings who were left motherless because of this condition. So one of the greatest things we were able to do for them was get them a really good result that allowed the son not to have to worry about taking care of his siblings and not to have to worry about if something was going to happen to them and not to have to worry about taking care of his own family as well. So that was one of the first cases that I worked on that I was really happy and proud of the results but again we’ve had a number of them.

We had a recent fairly recent case involving a young woman who lives here in Massachusetts and she was a healthcare worker in Worcester area. And she hurt herself initially on the job and then through a series of events she had to have a shoulder surgery. And then that required something called a the use of a pain pump and the doctor used it in the way the manufacturer instructed them to and it turns out that it causes a condition called PAGCL which is basically where the cartilage in your arm, your shoulder is gone. And it’s bone on bone and it’s very very painful. And this young woman who thought she just had a slight rotator cuff repair was left basically without the use of her arm and required a total shoulder replacement at some point and she’s fairly young. She wasn’t able to work after that and we were able to get her an excellent result that allowed her to stay in her home, stay with her husband and take care of her young child and we were really happy with the result but I was happiest when I went to the court to have it approved and the judge congratulated me on how well we did for our client so that was a good win. We’ve got a lot of other ones as well too. We’re lucky here because working for plaintiffs in particular, when we get a result on their behalf they’re always so happy and appreciative but it makes us happy that we were able to do it for them as well.