From One Plaintiff to Thousands: Making Change in Mass Tort and Environmental Law with Brockstedt Mandalas Federico’s Philip Federico

Thirty-five years in, a career trajectory is usually fairly determined. Exciting, rewarding, but not necessarily surprising.

That seemed true for Philip Federico – nearly four decades into an acclaimed career as a plaintiffs’ medical malpractice lawyer, he achieved everything he’d set out to do in the area: securing record-breaking results, co-founding a strong firm and creating tangible, enduring change for victims of negligence.

So, in 2022, Federico decided it was time for a new path. Instead of helping one person at a time, he felt it was time to help thousands.

Now, Federico is at the forefront of some of the nation’s largest environmental and mass torts, getting in on the ground floor of hot-button issues like PFAS contamination and the effects of social media algorithms on children and adolescents.

But by the time he decided to shift gears, the idea to focus on mass actions had already been germinating for a decade. In 2009, Federico was contacted to represent a few individuals who alleged they were sexually abused by a physician named Earl Bradley. Federico had never worked on a mass tort, but he knew he could help more than a few victims in this case. He and his team brought more than 150 cases to the table – triple the number most firms in the suit were representing. In the end, the team uncovered that Bradley had assaulted more than 900 patients over his career, and his victims obtained a $123M settlement.

Where one matter succeeded, a similar one followed: Within 30 days of the conclusion of the Bradley case, Federico and his wife were reading the paper at breakfast when they encountered the story of gynecologist Nikita Levy, who had committed suicide after accusations that he had illicitly photographed and filmed hundreds of patients, including 60 underage girls. Federico and team achieved a $190M settlement in that mass tort.

Then, an entirely new practice area came into the mix. During the Bradley case, Federico met Delaware attorney Chase Brockstedt, and the two kept in touch. In 2017, Brockstedt reached out to Federico regarding a case against chicken processing plant Mountaire, alleging that the company had been disposing of toxic wastewater in the community of Millsboro, Delaware. Federico had never taken on an environmental case before, but, as he says, “We didn’t let that stop us.” If there was change to be made, Federico wanted to be at the forefront. Along with a team of experts, the pair litigated the case and scored a landmark $205M settlement against the giant.

Federico was moved by the experience. “I've come to appreciate that maybe the two most important resources we have as human beings are clean air and clean water,” he says. “Think about it. If you could not get your hands on drinkable water, how long would you survive?”

By then, Federico knew his time in medical malpractice had come to a close. With three incredibly successful mass torts under his belt, and a passion for helping communities on a wide scale, “I decided, at 65 years old, when I really could have retired, to find somewhere where I could have a little bit more freedom and opportunity to build a mass tort and environmental firm,” Federico says. So, in June of 2022, he and Brockstedt merged their firms, forming the now-named Brockstedt Mandalas Federico. With a dedicated medical malpractice wing still in-house, Federico now spends 95 percent of his time focused exclusively on mass tort and environmental work.

It's been a monumental job – Federico and his team have held leadership roles in eight new mass actions over the last two and a half years. But it’s a job Federico is meeting with skill, passion and vigor. Current matters they focus on include Camp LeJeune, AFFF and the Insulin Pricing Litigation, as well as representing nearly 80 school boards, including two of the nation’s largest school districts, in litigation against social media companies for their role in the teen mental health crisis. (It’s not his first time representing school boards, either: Federico was on the team representing nearly 60 school boards in litigation against e-cigarette company JUUL, which recovered more than $255M.) Harkening back to his initial mass tort work in the Bradley and Levy cases, Federico and his team also represent victims of childhood sexual assault through the Child Victims Act in Maryland.

On the environmental side, Federico is currently suing W.L. Gore, the corporation that produces waterproof Gore-Tex material for numerous companies, for the use of “forever chemicals,” as well as Perdue AgriBusiness for allegations of recklessly disposing wastewater containing PFAS. In recent wins, Federico recently secured a $103M settlement against New-Indy Paper Mill. The company was found to be emitting harmful pollutants into the air and discharging inadequately treated wastewater, exposing roughly one million residents in North Carolina and South Carolina to toxic chemicals.

Federico’s career has been monumental: In all, he’s secured verdicts and settlements in excess of one billion dollars that have helped aid tens of thousands of victims of medical malpractice, sexual assault and environmental damage. But his new practice is just beginning. Just three years into his dedicated mass tort and environmental law venture, with a staggering number of high-profile mass torts on the docket, Federico’s next era promises to fearlessly defend individuals, communities, and the planet – and send corporate giants running.

Lawdragon: What first drew you to a career in the law?

Philip Federico: My father was an attorney, and he practiced law until six months before he passed. He practiced law for 60-plus years.

LD: What kind of law did he practice?

PF: He started out as a criminal defense attorney. He had great people skills, and he was very gifted in a courtroom. He seemed to love what he did. When I was about 12 years old, I was too young to have a real job, but I wound up going to work for him in the summer. He bought me a blue blazer and a tie, and I’d go to court with him in the morning and get him a cup of coffee, and then I would go to lunch with him in the afternoon where he’d meet with other leaders for two hours and eat a steak in the middle of the day. And I said, “Wow, my father has the best job ever.” At that point, I knew I wanted to be a lawyer so I made sure I got good grades, and I was a lacrosse player in Baltimore, the home of lacrosse. I was one of the top recruits in the country in high school. Coupling that with my grades helped me get into Johns Hopkins, and then law school. 

PFAS is unequivocally today's version of asbestos. We're going to be litigating PFAS cases for the next two, three, four decades before this mess is cleaned up.

LD: What was your plan for a legal career?

PF: I wanted to work for my father. He was very much my mentor and somebody I looked up to. In college, I was playing both lacrosse and football, and in my junior year I suffered a really serious ankle injury. I was taken to a hospital where the athletic doctor was on vacation, so the person who operated on me performed a procedure that hadn’t been done in 25 years. I wound up having five operations because of an incorrect initial treatment. In 1980, after my last operation, I was watching the Olympics and trying to rehab my ankle to get back on the lacrosse field. There was an Olympic skier competing who suffered the same injury, nine months before winning a gold medal. And here I was, a year and a half later with five operations, and I couldn’t even run yet.

So, at 20 years old, I call the Olympic Village. I asked for his doctor, Richard Steadman, the orthopedic surgeon for the U.S. Olympic ski team and one of the most famous orthopedic surgeons in the history of the practice. I left a message saying, “It's Phil Federico from Hopkins. Could you give me a call?” Well, the next morning my mother yells upstairs, “It's Dr. Steadman on the phone,” and I can't believe this guy's actually calling me back. I pick up the phone and he says to me, “Is this Dr. Federico?” He assumed I was a physician from Hopkins. But I told him my story, and he said, “If you can get to Lake Placid in the next week and bring your X-rays, I'll see you.”

I had never heard the words "medical malpractice" in my life before. Dr. Steadman told me there was no way he could fix it – that I’d probably need a fusion and that my athletic career was over. I came back home and my number one fan is who? My father, the lawyer. He said I’d been a victim of medical malpractice and introduced me to his friend, Marvin Ellin, who was considered the dean of medical malpractice in Maryland. I meet Mr. Ellin, he vets my story and says I have a good case.

LD: Was there a medical malpractice case in the end?

PF: There was, and it was settled. It didn't make me a rich man. And frankly, I would give that money back 10 times over to have my ankle.

But Mr. Ellin understood that I was starting law school. He offered me a job as a law clerk, and I stayed there, with attorneys John Schochor and Kerry Staton. Within two years, the three of us started our own firm; I started my own medical malpractice firm as a named partner when I was 27 or 28 years old.

LD: Wow.

PF: I had no money and it was terrifying. But at the same time, it was exhilarating. We became really successful really quickly, and we were together for 37 years. I practiced medical malpractice exclusively for 25 years.

LD: Then things changed with your first mass tort case, the Bradley case.

PF: Yes. At that point I wanted to start pivoting to mass torts. I’d done everything I could in medical malpractice, every kind of case. I'd exceeded my own expectations. Then, I got a call from a lawyer I know in Delaware, and he asked if I wanted to do the case – he had two or three clients. I knew that we’d have to get more clients than anyone else to make a real impact. I remember we went to the first hearing with the judge in the Bradley case, and he went around the table asking people how many cases they had. I was the last person at the table. I was the newest. He was up to about 150 cases when he got to me. And he asked how many cases we had, and we said 185. He said, “Oh, so you have 35 cases, right?” And I said, “No, I have 185 cases.”

LD: What else helped you be successful in those first mass torts?

PF: I'm forever grateful to Peter Angelos, a friend of my father’s and the king of mass torts in Maryland and across the mid-Atlantic, for helping me create a playbook that worked and continues to work. 

LD: What does the playbook consist of?

PF: It’s not rocket science. One common theme is that the defendant is not my enemy. There's been a mistake, people have been hurt, and those people need to be taken care of. We need to do our best to make sure that whatever damage has been caused is remediated and the mistake doesn't get repeated. I much prefer to work with a defendant than waste time banging heads. We can bang heads if we need to and we're pretty good at it, but ultimately, it's about finding a solution to a problem and moving forward.

The defendant is not my enemy. There's been a mistake, people have been hurt, and those people need to be taken care of.

LD: How have you approached building the caseload over the last couple years?

PF: I've learned it's not complicated. It's no different really than medical malpractice. You need to get clients. If you don't get clients, you have nothing to do. So phase one is finding clients, and a lot of that has to do with having relationships and understanding people and their communities. Phase two then is vetting cases. There's no better way to ruin a contingency-fee law firm than taking on expensive cases that don't pan out. So, over the last two and a half years, we’ve had eight new cases. To double our inventory, maybe even triple it in two to three years has been really great.

LD: The litigation against New-Indy recently settled. Can you tell me a bit about that case?

PF: New-Indy has paper plants all over the U.S., and this particular plant converted from white paper to brown paper. But to do that in an environmentally responsible way, you need to spend a lot of money. They didn't spend any of the money. And so that was the case. We had a wonderful time for three years banging heads with Robert Kraft, who co-owns the paper mill – and owns the New England Patriots.

LD: You came into environmental law somewhat by chance, but it does seem like it's at such a key time. Why is it an important area to be working in right now to you?

PF: I've never viewed myself as an environmentalist, but I've come to appreciate that maybe the two most important resources we have as human beings are clean air and clean water. Think about it. If you could not get your hands on drinkable water, how long would you survive? If you were in a place where you couldn't breathe clean air, how long would you survive? These things are really within our control.

We have a mantra at our firm: We strive for truth, we strive for transparency and we strive for accountability in the cases we handle. And in the environmental world, I've come to learn that corporate America can really knowingly ignore their responsibility to do their job in an environmentally safe way and expose no end of people to products and chemicals that'll kill you. I mean, PFAS is unequivocally today's version of asbestos. We're going to be litigating PFAS cases for the next two, three, four decades before this mess is cleaned up. So, we're on the front end of that timeline. It’s called a “forever chemical” for a reason. It causes cancer and it doesn't break down.

My practice is about 50 percent environmental, but if you put the environmental cases to the side and look at our other mass torts, when I was a medical malpractice lawyer, I could help one person at a time. Now, I can help hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of people. Take what social media has done to the young people in this country, for example. There are some positive aspects to social media, but clearly the big four big social media companies knowingly put in place algorithms to addict kids and cause irreparable damage. It's all about holding people accountable and fixing the problems.

LD: To that end, since your career has shifted so much over the years, is there a throughline to what you’ve found most fulfilling about your career as a lawyer, or has it shifted? 

PF: The motivations for what I do and the enjoyment that I get out of what I'm doing has pretty much stayed the same. The thing that I always fall back on is when I was a medical malpractice lawyer, and when a case ended, and the client came in to meet with me for the last time. Invariably before they left, we’d go to say goodbye and I wouldn't get a handshake, I’d get a hug. That resonates with me more than anything. I mean, it's nice to make a good living. But my father used to say, if you take care of your clients, you'll make a good living. Don't focus on the money, focus on cases and taking care of your clients. It’s much the same in mass torts. While you don't get a hug from every client, you get plenty of them and you get plenty of emails and plenty of phone calls and plenty of letters. It's very energizing.

Another thing that keeps me enjoying it so much is the people I work with. I'm a sports-oriented guy, and I sort of see myself as a coach of a team. I've got a team of eight to 12 lawyers and a similar number of paralegals. Everybody plays a role and everybody works really hard. There's a great culture, a great work ethic, and it’s fun to be part of the team.