(L-to-R) Greg Francis and Joe Osborne

Plaintiffs attorneys Joe Osborne and Greg Francis have launched their own firm, Osborne & Francis — a six-attorney firm that will focus on a wide range of civil litigation, including medical device and personal injury cases.

Osborne has been operating his own Boca Raton-based firm — Osborne and Associates — since 2015, where he specialized in mass tort cases involving defective hip implants and other product liability.

Francis left his role as a shareholder at Morgan & Morgan in Orlando earlier this year. In his time there, Francis focused on medical malpractice, police misconduct, wrongful death and catastrophic personal injury cases.

Francis also served as Lead Counsel on the $1.2 billion Black Farmers Settlement, a class action lawsuit comprised of nearly 40,000 African-American farmers. The case was the largest Civil Rights settlement to date. 

During a summer clerkship at former defense firm Bobo, Spicer, Ciotoli, Fulford & Bocchino, Francis worked with Osborne, who was then a young associate. Francis came on full-time shortly after graduation and the two developed a personal friendship and professional relationship that has spanned the decades since the pair left that firm.

Their friendship was the key to the creation of Osborne & Francis. Osborne said that he is convinced that together, their nascent firm will be able to expand exponentially and organically throughout the state.

“I think our business acumen and sense of developing businesses and relationships has always been a bond for us,” he said.

Francis said that for him, leaving Big Law to start his own firm was the next natural step. He spent years working to expand Morgan & Morgan into Atlanta and elsewhere in Georgia.

“For me, it was a natural progression. After being involved in expansion at Morgan & Morgan, it was time for me to expand into my own firm,” he said. “It's new and interesting to start your own culture.”

Francis is based in Orlando, where he will handle medical malpractice and personal injury cases. Osborne will head up the firm's medical devices practice from his office in Boca Raton.