Da Vega, Matthew S.

Joe is a partner and the founding member of the firm. He is an AV-rated™ attorney, a Super Lawyer™ and has extensive trial and appellate experience in commercial, entertainment, mass tort and complex litigation.

Joe is a proven tactician in the handling and trial of litigated commercial and personal injury matters, from the mundane to the complex. His clients include: individuals; entertainment, fashion and sports managers and their talent; biotech and life science companies; product manufacturers; and real estate investment firms.

He has handled a number of mass tort and products liability matters where scientific and medical issues of causation are hotly contested. He has a Bachelor of Science with honors, majoring in Biology and Mathematics in his undergraduate studies. He graduated in the top ten percent of his law school class and was a member of the school’s Law Review. He was IBM’s National Trial and Coordinating Counsel in the In re: Repetitive Stress Injury Litigation and Lead and Liaison Counsel for the Computer Industry in New York County Data Entry Workers’ Litigation. He was also UPS’s National Trial and Coordinating Counsel in the In re: DIAD Litigation (another mass tort). He has to his credit a number of successful verdicts and decisions resulting from his strategy and personal involvement in these mass tort litigations.

In the In re: Fashion Model Antitrust Litigation, Joe represented IMG in a horizontal price-fixing class action and acted as lead counsel for the defense (all of the major fashion model agencies in New York). At settlement negotiations and the fairness hearing, the plaintiffs’ class counsel noted his skills as a trial lawyer as one of the factors justifying the settlement with our “deep-pocket” client. He has since become known as “The Lawyer to the Fashion Model Industry.”

His victories were publicized in The National Law Journal’s “Major Defense Verdicts: A Roundup of Significant 1995 Cases” in its March 4, 1996 edition. He has the appellate, trial and tactical experience that is rarely found in today’s litigators.

Joe is currently Lead Counsel in the In re: New York Human Tissue Litigation, a mass tort in which the firm represents a tissue processor that received human tissue donations from a tissue recovery company that falsified the consents of the family members of the deceased. Upon learning of this criminal enterprise, the FDA issued a recall of all human tissue recovered by this rogue company. The claims involved are not only the emotional distress of the family members of the deceased, but also of the surgical patients who were recipients of this recalled tissue.

As national counsel for IBM and others, Joe’s role was not limited to simply defending the client’s interests in court and coordinating the efforts of numerous local counsel across the country. He also worked closely with corporate communications and government programs personnel to develop and coordinate public relations and lobbying strategies as part of the defense effort. He also played a role in coordinating the defense effort with the client’s new product development.

Joe is an active member of the bar and has lectured on mass tort litigation and trial tactics for bar associations, both locally and nationally, and has been appointed to the New York County Administrative Judge’s Tort Advisory Committee as a representative for the New York trial bar.