At personal injury law firm Pribanic & Pribanic, the attorneys know that to overcome adversity and succeed in legal matters it requires one thing consistently: dedication.
Time and again, the cases thatVictor Pribanic and his team take on reveal that he isn’t afraid to take on the tough cases, and doesn’t back down, even in the face of legal challenges, which—in high-stakes battles with large companies, hospitals, and insurance carriers—are common in the landscape of personal injury and wrongful death.
Founding member Victor Pribanic established the firm in 1984, following five years as an assistant district attorney in Pittsburgh. Since then, Pribanic & Pribanic has earned a reputation as a top-shelf firm for liability, personal injury, and medical negligence cases. Pribanic & Pribanic has tried medical negligence and injury cases of all kinds, says Pribanic, and the firm employs the best and newest trial strategies and technologies to ensure the very best results for their clients.
“I have seen clients grow from infants into young men and women, and I am comforted every time I see them.” – Victor Pribanic
“We use cutting edge graphics and computer support in all our trials,” says Pribanic. “I have been an advocate of that for years, but nowadays jurors view technology as part and parcel. We use computer simulations, pathology slides, radiological images, and more in medical cases, making trials more efficient and informative, giving us the best advantage possible.”
Those advantages have paid off. Pribanic & Pribanic has been awarded a Tier 1 ranking in Pittsburgh byU.S. News – Best Lawyers “Best Law Firms” in the areas of plaintiffs’ medical malpractice law, product liability litigation, and personal injury litigation, and it is rated AV Preeminent-rated by Martindale-Hubbell, the organization’s highest rating for legal ability and ethical standards.
It is those esteemed credentials that allow Pribanic & Pribanic to successfully try cases to significant financial result for their clients, and to take on even demanding personal injury cases.
Pennsylvania is one of the nation’s largest areas for natural gas drilling, and the firm’s cases involving fracking, an industry that, “whatever the benefits it might be affording our state economically, comes with the burden of injury and death” due to dangerous equipment, says Pribanic. The firm is currently in appeals court in Washington, D.C., in coordination with several large firms across the country, pursuing a case against a cell phone manufacturer, service provider, and lobbying group on behalf of a client who died after developing a brain tumor caused by using a cell phone.
Major verdicts for Pribanic & Pribanic have included a $103 million verdict in an accounting negligence/fraud suit, a $21 million settlement in a product liability/medical and hospital malpractice case, and a $6 million verdict for the family of a young woman who died because of an undiagnosed and untreated brain aneurysm.
In May 2016, Victor Pribanic—who has been listed in The Best Lawyers in America since 2010 and has been selected as Best Lawyers’ Pittsburgh “Lawyer of the Year” four times in the past six years: in 2010, 2012, and 2015 for plaintiffs’ product liability litigation, and in 2014 for plaintiffs’ medical malpractice law—will try a high-profile bellwether case against General Motors. In the wrongful death suit, filed in federal court in New York, Pribanic will assert that the company’s ignition-switch defect caused the death of 35-year-old James Yingling, after Yingling crashed his 2006 Saturn Ion in Pennsylvania in November 2013.
In January 2016, the first of these bellwether cases, cases in which legal theories can be tested and each side can assess the strengths and weaknesses of their case, was dismissed without being put before a jury, an inauspicious start for a mass litigation. Attorneys for Oklahoma postal worker Robert Scheuer agreed to the dismissal after allegations that Mr. Scheuer had lied. But Pribanic & Pribanic’s case is stronger, and Mr. Pribanic’s trial expertise is a powerful weapon in advocating for his clients.
“[Mr. Yingling] left behind five children and a lovely wife who had no understanding of what happened,” says Mr. Pribanic of the crash. “And months after the crash, we find that this inexplicable tragedy is, in fact, explained by a defect that GM hid for 10 years. Apart from any legal remedy, it is good to be able to explain to the family what happened.”
And providing comfort, some degree of peace of mind, and financial stability to victims of catastrophic personal injury and wrongful death is a service that Mr. Pribanic finds deeply rewarding. “I have seen clients grow from infants into young men and women, and I am comforted every time I see them,” says Pribanic, “because I know they are financially secure because of something our firm could do for them. Money or success or fame has nothing to do with it, it only has to do with the reassurance we get when we can look at a child and think, ‘He is ok; I was able to help.”
Eva Saviano, The Best Lawyers in Pittsburgh 2016
