Concentration: Alex MacDonald focuses his practice as a Philadelphia personal injury lawyer on representing plaintiffs in complex personal injury, medical malpractice, pharmaceutical, and products liability litigation. If you have been injured due to medical negligence, our Philadelphia medical malpractice lawyer can assist you with your case. Mr. MacDonald also helps clients who were given dangerous drugs. Likewise, he also assists those who were injured after using specific harmful products. He has been trial counsel in a number of leading plaintiffs' tort cases, both in Massachusetts and nationally in recent years. His cases include the January 28, 2000 largest wrongful death recovery in Massachusetts's history in the first Fen-Phen diet pill death case filed in the United States.

Experience: Mr. MacDonald's thirty year trial career is punctuated with many noteworthy courtroom outcomes, including a then record-setting $4.6 million recovery for a widow and her three children in a malignant hyperthermia medical malpractice death action; a $1.7 million federal court jury verdict for false arrest/civil rights/legal malpractice violations arising from the wrongful incarceration of a client for 24 hours in a state mental health facility in central Massachusetts; and a $1.5 million eve-of-trial settlement in a complex neurosurgical medical malpractice case involving loss of sexual function injuries in a 38-year-old Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate student.

Beginning in December 1996, Mr. MacDonald undertook leadership of a five-member trial team in the nation's first Fen-Phen pharmaceutical death action, Estate of Mary Linnen vs. American Home Products, et.al. (Middlesex Superior Court, Cambridge, MA).

In April 1998, he was appointed by the federal court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, overseeing the consolidated national diet pill litigation (MDL [multi-district litigation] #1203 in re Diet Pill Litigation) to the Plaintiff's Discovery and Expert Witness Committees, where he played a key role throughout the 1998 to 2001 period. Those efforts contributed to the successfully negotiated $4 billion global settlement of 200,000 Fen-Phen diet pill claims pending in the federal court MDL. That settlement, judicially approved by the federal court on August 30, 2000, is among the largest mass tort resolutions in United States history.

In the six years since conclusion of the Linnen trial, Mr. MacDonald has been lead trial counsel in over fifty (50) additional primary pulmonary hypertension (PPH) wrongful death cases arising from Fen-Phen pharmaceutical exposure. These PPH cases, in Massachusetts, Texas, Louisiana, Colorado, Kentucky, New York, Utah, Pennsylvania and Illinois, involve litigation widely acknowledged in the trial bar to comprise among the most sophisticated and serious variety of pharmaceutical/products liability litigation. In each PPH case litigated to date, Mr. MacDonald and his colleagues have prevailed on behalf of their clients. The pivotal role played by Mr. MacDonald and the trial team he led in the national Fen-Phen litigation is chronicled in the book Dispensing with the Truth: The Battle over Fen-Phen (St. Martin's Press, 2001) by Alicia Mundy.

In September 2006, Mr. MacDonald and his Philadelphia-based partners, Kenneth Rothweiler and Stewart Eisenberg, filed five (5) newly diagnosed, diet-pilled induced PPH cases in the Court of Common Pleas in Philadelphia. These cases are anticipated to come to trial in mid-2007 and challenge the pharmaceutical industry's "latency" defense.

Between 2001 and 2006, Mr. MacDonald prosecuted cases across the country on behalf of stroke and death victims of the drug phenylpropanolamine (PPA), which was withdrawn from the United States marketplace by order of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on November 6, 2000. The team led by Mr. filed the first-in-the-nation wrongful death case arising from PPA use on February 13, 2001, Estate of Ziolkowski vs. Novartis (Federal District Court for The District of Massachusetts). On January 17, 2002, Mr. MacDonald was appointed by Judge Barbara Jacobs Rothstein as one of the twelve (12) Plaintiff Steering Committee lawyers charged with overseeing and prosecuting the national PPA MDL #1407, In Re: Phenylpropanolamine (PPA) Products Liability Litigation, currently pending in the Federal District Court in Seattle, Washington.

Mr. MacDonald favorably resolved over twenty-five (25) PPA cases between June 2003 and mid-2006, including two catastrophic pediatric stroke cases -- one in Portland, Maine and the other Boston, Massachusetts. The June 2003 eight-figure, eve-of-trial settlement in the Portland case is the largest personal injury recovery ever obtained in the State of Maine. Additional one million to ten million dollar recoveries for PPA stroke victims were obtained by Mr. MacDonald in death and near-death cases in Massachusetts, Tennessee, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Mr. MacDonald, since January 2000, also serves as a court appointed member of the Science and Expert Witness Committee in MDL No. 1355, In Re: Propulsid Products Liability Litigation, pending in the Federal District Court for the District of Louisiana before Judge Fallon.

Currently, in addition to the above PPH cases and selected medical malpractice wrongful death litigation, Mr. MacDonald leads a team of four Eisenberg, Rothweiler & MacDonald trial lawyers in wrongful death cases in Utah, New Jersey and Georgia arising from fatal Fentanyl drug overdoses resulting from leakage defects in the "Duragesic Patch," a potent pain relief medical device manufactured and marketed by subsidiaries of Johnson & Johnson.

Education: Mr. a graduate with distinction from Boston University and Harvard Law School, is a frequent invited lecturer on tort law, trial technique, and mass tort legal issues at Continuing Legal Education seminars across the United States. In addition, he and his trial team colleagues are regularly sought as co-counsel by other experienced trial attorneys in the United States who are engaged in complex or mass tort pharmaceutical or medical device litigation.

Membership: Mr. MacDonald is an active member of the Boston Bar Association, where he chaired its Membership Committee from 1992 to 1998, and the Association of Trial Lawyers of America. Since 1989, he has served on the board of directors of the Greater Boston Legal Services, Inc., an antipoverty legal agency, and its Executive Committee from 1992 to 1999.

Professional Presentations

• "Litigation Forum -- Electronic Discovery: Best Practices & Evolving Law," (June 2001) presented at Bureau of National Affairs, Washington, D.C.
• "Class Actions and Mass Tort Claims," (June 2001) presented at Boston Bar Association (BBA), Boston, MA
• "Trial Advocacy Workshop, Computerized Demonstrative Evidence in The 'Paperless 'Trial," (June 2001) presented at MCLE, Boston, MA
• "Mass Tort: Scientific Evidence & Causation," (May 2001) presented at Mealey's, West Palm Beach, FL
• "Phenylpropanolamine (PPA) Litigation: The Early Evidence of Liability," (March 2001) presented at Mealy's PPA Conference, Philadelphia, PA
• "The Trial of a Diet Pill Wrongful Death Case: The Opening Statement and Spoiliation Argument in Estate of Linnen v. AHP" (September 2000) presented at MDL-sponsored seminar, New Orleans, LA
• "Fen-Phen Litigation: The MDL's Best Liability Documents, and Videotaped Experts," (September 2000) presented at MDL-sponsored seminar, Las Vegas, NV
• "Fen-Phen Trial Strategies Conference," (March 2000) presented at Mealey's, Philadelphia, PA
• "Examination of the Corporate Liability Witnesses in a Diet Pill Case," (July 1999) presented at ATLA Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA
• "Fen-Phen Litigation Conference," (April 1999) presented at Mealey's Conference, West Palm Beach, FL
• "Litigating Fen-Phen Cases: The AHP Corporate Structure," (October 1998) presented at Mealey's Fen-Phen Litigation Seminar, Las Vegas, NV
• "Fen-Phen and Redux Diet Pills – The Next Wave of Tort Litigation," (June 1998) presented at ATLA, Washington, DC
• "Liability of AHP in PPH Litigation: Fen-Phen Convention," (March 1998) presented at Association of Trial Lawyers of America (ATLA), Atlanta, GA
• "Fen-Phen and Redux Litigation: The Lessons of Linnen v. AHP," (January 1998) presented at Massachusetts Continuing Legal Education (MCLE), Boston, MA
• "Diet Pills and Pulmonary Hypertension: Linnen v. AHP The Early Evidence of AHP's Liability," (January 1998) presented at Mealey's, Los Angeles, CA
• "MCLE Personal Injury Conference '98: False Arrest and § 1983 Civil Rights Litigation," (May 1998) presented at MCLE, Boston, MA
• "Trial Advocacy Workshop, Computerized Demonstrative Evidence in a Pharmaceutical Trial," (August 2000) presented at MCLE, Boston, MA
• "Phentermine Science Seminar" (July 29-Aug 2, 2000) presented at ATLA

To speak with Alex MacDonald, or another Philadelphia personal injury lawyer, contact Eisenberg, Rothweiler, Winkler, Eisenberg & Jeck, P.C. today.