Personal injury lawyer gets another namesake law school with $50 mln gift

REUTERS/Jonathan Drake

Sept 8 (Reuters) – Philadelphia personal damage attorney Thomas Kline on Wednesday grew to become the only living legal professional to have two legislation educational institutions named for him.

Duquesne University declared a rebranding of its regulation faculty adhering to a $50 million motivation by Kline that it termed the largest reward in the university’s history. The Pittsburgh school is now referred to as the Thomas R. Kline College of Regulation of Duquesne University.

Drexel University’s legislation college has also been the Thomas R. Kline School of Legislation due to the fact 2014, when Kline donated $50 million to the Philadelphia institution.

Kline graduated from Duquesne law in 1978 right before launching a effective vocation as a demo legal professional and co-founding personal injury and malpractice legislation business Kline & Spector, which has extra than 50 lawyers and 5 workplaces.

The company secured an $8 billion verdict against Johnson & Johnson in 2019 involving the anti-psychotic drug Risperdal. Kline has also represented events in litigation above the 2015 Amtrak derailment in Philadelphia that killed eight people and in the Penn Condition University Jerry Sandusky molestation circumstance.

“I have lengthy been very pleased of my alma mater and have been satisfied to have played a role in strengthening its long term,” Kline reported in an announcement of the donation and title improve.

Kline in 2017 gave Duquesne Law $7.5 million to establish a judicial instruction centre for Pennsylvania judges and court personnel. His most up-to-date donation will fund scholarships, college grants for training and scholarship, bar preparing and new clinics, the university mentioned.

Two law colleges are at the moment named for early 19th century U.S. Supreme Court docket Chief Justice John Marshall, nevertheless a 3rd dropped his title in 2021 and a different is weighing a similar shift right after new info surfaced about the variety of slaves Marshall owned.

The law universities at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Maryland both of those bear the Carey identify adhering to donations from the W.P Carey Basis, but they are named for diverse deceased users of the Carey loved ones.

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Reporting by Karen Sloan

Our Criteria: The Thomson Reuters Trust Ideas.