Ronald L. M. Goldman is a veteran trial lawyer; board certified as a civil trial lawyer, certified by the National Board of Trial Advocacy. He is the senior trial attorney for Baum, Hedlund, Aristei & Goldman. Since becoming a lawyer in 1963, Ron has handled a wide variety of sophisticated litigation at both the trial and appellate levels and he has litigated hundreds of cases over the past 45 years involving catastrophic personal injury, traumatic brain injury, and wrongful death related to commercial transportation liability and pharmaceutical drug product liability.
He supervises and is involved in handling the firm's cases concerning aviation, bus, train and truck crashes and pharmaceutical drug product liability cases involving Avandia, Heparin, Paxil and Reglan as well as birth defect cases associated with the antidepressants, Celexa, Effexor, Lexapro, Pristiq, Prozac, and Zoloft.
He is a pilot and the head of the firm's aviation disaster litigation team. Ron taught for 21 years at Pepperdine School of Law as an adjunct Law Professor, where he created and taught the course on Aviation Accident Law. He also taught courses in Torts and Insurance and Legal Writing and Analysis.
In 1969 Ron handled his first aviation case and has continued handling aviation cases ever since in accidents such as: the 1972 British European Airways crash near London; the 1978 Pacific Southwest Airlines Flight 182 / Cessna 172 Midair Collision at San Diego, California; the 1986 Aero Mexico Flight 498 / Piper Midair Collision at Cerritos, California; and the 2000 Southwest Airlines runway accident at Burbank, California. He also handled the September 11, 2001 aviation (passenger) tort litigation in which he also served on the Plaintiffs' Executive Committee. Since joining the firm in 2003 he has worked on all of the firm’s general aviation and airline disaster cases.
He was the lead negotiator in one of the firm’s most significant aviation litigation achievements. He won, as part of the settlement in the January 8, 2003 Air Midwest Flight 5481 crash in Charlotte, NC, the agreement of the airline and maintenance company, in an organized ceremony, to deliver an unprecedented official public apology to the families for the crash. Three years later Ron appeared in a dramatic re-enactment of the crash, its subsequent investigation and the ultimate public apology, which aired on National Geographic Television.
Ron was involved in ground-breaking pharmaceutical litigation which helped pave the way for the drug product liability litigation lawyers are facing today. In the 1960s he was actively involved in exposing Richardson-Merrell’s, (later known as Marion Merrell Dow) cholesterol-lowering drug, MER/29 (triparanol) which was blamed for severe side effects and birth defects. The company was ultimately indicted for supplying the FDA with falsified information about the drug.
He is an AV® Preeminent Peer Review Rated lawyer through Martindale Hubbell* and is listed in the Bar Register of Preeminent Lawyers, Who’s Who in America, and Multi-Million Dollar Advocates Forum. He is also published in Million Dollar Verdicts by the Masters and has been selected for inclusion in the 2005-2010 Southern California Super Lawyers®.
As lead trial counsel, Ron won one of the largest verdicts of its type in Ohio’s history in December of 2006. The case concerned an unmarried person who died in a Tyson Foods truck crash. The case, Brumfield v. Tyson Foods, Inc., N.D. Ohio Case No. 1:05CV847, before Judge Donald C. Nugent, resulted in a jury verdict of $7,028,687.
Ron Goldman has appeared in the media more than 350 times concerning aviation accidents and pharmaceutical drug product liability, including safety oversight issues. Numerous media have sought Ron’s expert opinion as a pilot and former adjunct aviation accident law professor concerning airline accidents in the U.S. and abroad as well as regarding runway incursions at LAX.
He has been seen on TV, radio, and in newspapers, such as BBC Radio, ANN News Tokyo, Associated Press, Bloomberg News, BNA Product Safety & Liability Reporter, Chicago Tribune, Forbes.com, Fox News Channel, Guardian Limited, Los Angeles Times, MSNBC, National Law Journal, NPR, and the Washington Post.
Ron received his B.S.L. in 1960 and his law degree in 1962, both from the University of Southern California.
*AV® Rating Explanation: Martindale-Hubbell is the facilitator of a peer review rating process. Ratings reflect the confidential opinions of members of the Bar and the Judiciary. Martindale-Hubbell Ratings fall into two categories - legal ability and general ethical standards. AV® Preeminent ™ is a certification mark of Reed Elsevier Properties Inc., used in accordance with the Martindale-Hubbell certification procedures, standards and policies.
Southern California Super Lawyers 2012
Southern California Super Lawyers 2011
Southern California Super Lawyers 2010
Southern California Super Lawyers 2009
Southern California Super Lawyers 2008
Southern California Super Lawyers 2007
Southern California Super Lawyers 2006
Southern California Super Lawyers 2005
Admitted: 1963, California
Professional Webpage: www.baumhedlundlaw.com/bios2/goldman.php
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