Garcia, Vincent B.

Thomas C. DeLorenzo is the chair of the Employment Law Practice Group and a member of the firm’s Board of Directors. He is an experienced trial attorney and has for many years focused his practice on employment and labor matters as well as municipal liability, environmental litigation and toxic tort law.

Tom represents employers and has handled hundreds of cases covering a full range of employment law issues in the federal and state courts and before the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission, the Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations and the federal EEOC. These cases include claims alleging discrimination due to age, sex, disability, religion, race and national origin and also include related tort claims such as defamation, intentional infliction of emotional distress, wrongful termination, etc. He has also handled union grievance arbitrations and breach of employment contract cases. Tom is a past Editor of the Labor Report, a publication of the Pennsylvania Chamber of Commerce and Industry which updates members on current developments in employment law.

In the field of public entity liability, Tom represents municipalities, governmental authorities, school districts, colleges, police departments, individual police officers, county prisons, and others. He has defended public entities in cases arising out of police pursuits, claims of excessive force, allegations of civil rights violations, allegations of inequitable sewer rates, claims of misrepresentation in contract negotiations with public authority contractors, claims of negligent design/maintenance of traffic controls and/or roadways and many others. Tom is also experienced in representing public entities in the full range of employment law matters mentioned above.

Tom also has significant experience in toxic tort personal injury actions, having handled hundreds of cases involving various claims of lung or neurological damage. Tom has represented the major manufacturer of asbestos products and one of the major manufacturers of beryllium-containing products. He has handled numerous multi-party cases, including many class actions and many multi-plaintiff individual actions in the toxic tort field.  Tom has taken 56 cases to verdict, and another 16 were settled after the trial started. He has received 50 defense verdicts, and 20 cases ended in a verdict or settlement significantly below the settlement demands.

In 1975, Tom became involved in handling asbestos litigation for Johns-Manville. He soon became one of the lead counsel in the Philadelphia area asbestos litigation and participated in the early development of strategies and techniques for the handling of complex, multi-party toxic tort litigation. Tom has also handled many other types of toxic tort cases, including cases involving alleged exposure to pesticides, welding fumes, beryllium, TCE, gasoline, adhesives, epoxies, various dusts, lubricants, and other hazardous materials. In addition, in the course of his toxic tort work, Tom has successfully handled both national and regional class action cases. In addition, he has handled numerous environmental cases, including matters arising from Superfund landfill clean-ups, groundwater contamination, leaking underground storage tanks, private party cost recovery actions, drinking water contamination and others.

He is the past Chair of the Environmental Litigation and Regulation Subcommittee of the Defense Research Institute's Environmental Law Committee and is a past Co-Chair of the Environmental Law and Toxic Tort Committee of the Pennsylvania Defense Institute.
Tom has authored a number of articles in professional periodicals on environmental and toxic tort litigation issues.

At the request of various clients, Tom has organized and/or given presentations at various CLE/CE seminars and training sessions for attorneys and claims representatives. In addition, he has been a repeat guest lecturer in a graduate level course dealing with the social responsibility of management.

Tom was selected by his peers to be included in "The Best Lawyers in America" (2010, 2011 and 2012 editions) and was also listed in December 2011 by "The American Lawyer" as one of the "Top Lawyers, 2011."  In addition, Tom was named as one of the Top 100 Philadelphia Lawyers in the Philadelphia Magazine Super Lawyer Section in 2006.   He has also been named as a Super Lawyer in the area of Employment Defense Litigation in the years 2005 to present.

Significant Representative Matters:
 
• Successfully defeated a medical monitoring class action involving a putative class of 200,000 residents allegedly affected by air emissions from a manufacturing plant. The alleged damages were in the millions.

• Defeated a nationwide medical monitoring class action involving machinists allegedly affected by emissions from metal products they were machining. The alleged damages were $2 billion.

• Prevailed in a personal injury action in which a police department was sued for alleged failure to obtain medical care for an individual in custody. The demand was $4 million. The jury returned a defense verdict in 35 minutes.

• Participated in the successful defense of four personal injury actions alleging harm as a result of a gasoline release from a nearby gas station. The total demands were in excess of $60 million. The trial lasted six weeks. The jury took only a couple of hours to return four defense verdicts.