Joseph Z. Traub

Joseph Traub has dedicated his career to obtaining justice for people injured or killed by others’ wrongdoing. Mr. Traub has had the great privilege and responsibility of representing people catastrophically injured by defective industrial and consumer products, unsafe construction practices, dangerous driving and serious medical errors. For example, he has helped to secure significant recoveries for a man thrown from a scissor lift with poor lateral stability, a woman whose arm was pulled into a commercial ironing roller that lacked a guard over its pinch point, a family struck by a drunk driver, and a man whose throat cancer was missed by a pathologist, among many others. His work has helped provide financial relief, as well as justice and resolution, to injured people and their families, while also pressing manufacturers to sell safer products and hospitals to ensure safer medical practices.

Since 2010, Mr. Traub has been co-author, together with federal Judge Gerald McHugh, of the annual supplement to Pennsylvania Torts, a treatise in the West Pennsylvania Practice Series published by Thompson-Reuters that is an essential resource for personal injury litigators. Mr. Traub is on the editorial board of The Verdict, the Philadelphia Trial Lawyers Association’s monthly newsletter, which gives members practice tips and makes them aware of important developments in the law, enabling them to advocate more effectively on behalf of their clients. He has lectured and published articles on recent developments in products liability law, legal ethics, strategies in construction litigation, mandatory arbitration agreements, the statute of repose, and federal preemption, among other topics.

Mr. Traub’s advocacy in Pennsylvania’s appeals courts has resulted in several positive developments in the law. In appeals on behalf of Mr. Traub’s clients, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has published opinions ensuring funds are available to compensate malpractice victims where a doctor’s insurance carrier goes bankrupt (Heim v. Medical Care Availability and Reduction of Error Fund, 23 A.3d 506 (Pa. 2011)) and allowing medical experts to testify where they are familiar with the care at issue, even if they do not practice in the same specialty as the defendant (Vicari v. Spiegel, 989 A.2d 1277 (Pa. 2010)). Mr. Traub volunteers on the Amicus Curiae Committee of the Pennsylvania Association for Justice, where he submits briefs to the appellate courts of Pennsylvania advocating for the rights of injured people throughout the Commonwealth. One amicus curiae brief he submitted helped persuade the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to preclude doctors from defending themselves at trial by telling the jury what risks the doctor disclosed to the patient before doing a procedure, where the lawsuit does not criticize the disclosure but merely alleges that the doctor did the procedure negligently. (Brady v. Urbas, 111 A.3d 1155 (Pa. 2015)).