Law Office of Daniel S. Kozma - Washington, DC

Overview

I have over twenty five years' experience representing individuals, workers and unions in federal and local trial and appellate courts throughout the country. I am committed to representing the interests and rights of employees and injured individuals. A graduate of the Cornell Law School, I have extensive jury trial experience and have tried cases throughout the country, from San Diego, California, to Seattle, Washington, in Tennessee and Maryland, and in Richmond and Alexandria, Virginia, as well as in the District of Columbia. I am admitted to the bars of the United States Supreme Court, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, the United States Courts of Appeals for the Second, Fifth, Eighth, Ninth and Eleventh Circuits, the United States District Courts for the District of Columbia and the District of Arizona, and the District of Columbia Court of Appeals. I am a member of the Board of Governors of the Trial Lawyers Association of Metropolitan Washington, D.C.

Having been a trial attorney for a major labor union for nine years and then a partner in a labor law firm for another nine years, I have considerable experience in employment law, including wrongful discharge, sex, race, and other forms of discrimination, labor law, employee benefits, and whistleblower laws. Most recently, in June 2003, a jury in Prince Georges County, Maryland gave a verdict of $1.15 million to Ransom Evely and Ken Moore, two of my clients, after a four day jury trial in a malicious prosecution and wrongful termination case against their former employer, Smithfield Packing Company. Evely and Moore v. Smithfield Packing Co. Inc., Case no. 02-13670 (Prince Georges County Circuit Court). In March 1999, after an eleven day trial, a jury in Oakland California awarded my client, airline pilot Kathleen Betts, over $1.5 million in a sex discrimination and defamation case against United Airlines. Betts v. United Airlines, Inc., Dkt. 97-4329 (U.S. Dist. Ct., N.D. Ca.).

Over the last ten years I have also become experienced in toxic tort and other complex personal injury cases, especially childhood and industrial lead poisoning cases. I have recovered over $8 million on behalf of lead poisoned children, including a jury verdict for over $1.6 million in April, 2000, after an eight day jury trial in the District of Columbia Superior Court in Gomez v. Atlantic Realty, Civ. 97-1151 (D.C. Sup. Ct.). That is the largest verdict or recovery for a lead poisoned child in the District of Columbia. I also settled a premises liability case in 2003 for almost $2 million. Of course I also have represented plaintiffs in the more commonplace personal injury cases, such as car accidents, slip and fall cases, assaults, and so on.

Formerly, and as mentioned above, I was a litigation and trial attorney on the staff of the Air Line Pilots Association, the largest pilots' union, for nine years and after that I was with a small union-side labor law firm in Washington, D.C. for another nine years, becoming a partner there. I then joined the law firm of Koonz, McKenney, Johnson, DePaolis & Lightfoot, one of the top personal injury firms in the area, and spent the last five years at that firm. In 2004, I decided to strike out on my own and open my own law office where I will have to opportunity and freedom to represent the clients I choose to represent with exceptional personal attention and skill.

I am a graduate of the University of Pittsburgh, I spent three years in the Army during the Vietnam Era and, after receiving my Honorable Discharge, I earned my law degree from the Cornell Law School. My wife of eighteen years, Lynne, much my better half, I and our two adopted children, Stephen, who has cerebral palsy, and Alyssa, the budding Marylou Retton and Mia Hamm, live in Arlington, Virginia.