South Carolina-based plaintiffs firm Motley Rice has added offices in New Jersey and Philadelphia with new hires.

Litigators Esther Berezofsky, Michael Quirk and Daniel Lapinski have joined the firm as senior counsel in Philadelphia and Cherry Hill, and Sarah Hansel has joined as an associate.

Berezofsky formerly led Berezofsky Law Group, where Quirk was a partner and Hansel was an associate. She just launched the firm about 18 months ago, after splitting with her longtime partners, Gerald Williams and Mark Cuker, in September 2017.

Lapinski was at Woodbridge-based Wilentz, Goldman & Spitzer.

Motley Rice's new offices will operate out of the same space in Philadelphia and Cherry Hill that Berezofsky Law Group had used.

According to Motley Rice co-founder Joe Rice, Berezofsky has been a co-counsel to the firm for many years.

“She was in a position to handle some good litigation, some good causes, but needed some depth,” Rice said.

Neither Berezofsky's practice nor Motley Rice's existing practice will change much, he added, other than providing more resources for cases that Berezofsky is bringing over in which she hadn't already been partnering with Motley Rice. 

“This was really borne of the relationships that have developed in the work we have done together,” Berezofsky said. “It really flowed from working together increasingly, working together more on various litigation.”

Berezofsky handles environmental, toxic tort and products liability work. She is currently on the plaintiffs' executive committee for the proposed class in litigation over Flint, Michigan's water crisis, and she is litigating similar cases in Fresno, California.

In addition to those kinds of cases, she also litigates medical drug and device suits. Before she was a practicing lawyer, she was a clinical psychologist who consulted law firms on post-traumatic stress disorder and community trauma, as it relates to chemical disasters.

While her move became official in April, the firm just announced its new office this week.

As the firm was in talks with Berezofsky, it was also courting Lapinski.

Lapinski's move was not coordinated with Berezofsky's, she said, but they have known each other for two decades and worked on litigation together previously. Berezofsky said she and Lapinski actually talked about joining forces about 12 years ago. “Having him join felt like a natural fit as well,” she said.

Lapinski's practice includes pharmaceutical and medical device litigation, and he is currently a member of the plaintiffs' steering committee in the Johnson & Johnson talcum powder multidistrict litigation and the Proton Pump Inhibitor MDL, according to Motley Rice.

With over 90 lawyers, Motley Rice is large by plaintiffs firm standards. It also has offices in Washington, D.C., New York, Missouri, Rhode Island and West Virginia.

Rice said Philadelphia is easy to get to, and fits well within the firm's existing East Coast footprint.

“It's an area that MDLs look to. The courts are sophisticated, they understand mass torts practice, they understand environmental practice. It just seemed like a good place to go,” he said.

But whether Motley Rice hires more lawyers in the Philadelphia area depends on how the practice goes, he said. The firm has lawyers in New York and Rhode Island who can get to Philadelphia pretty quickly, he noted, but “if we need people physically there, we'll add people physically there.”

Berezofsky's role in the Flint litigation and the split of her former firm were at the center of a case last year brought by her former partner, Cuker. But an arbitrator ruled in Berezofsky's favor that she was not obligated by a dissolution agreement to include Cuker in the Flint litigation, and a federal judge affirmed that decision in February.

Wilentz Goldman, in an emailed statement on Lapinski's departure, said: “Dan is an accomplished lawyer who served for years as a valued member of our leading mass tort and class action team. We wish him the best.”