Michael Barrett of Saltz Mongeluzzi Barrett & Bendesky.

Philadelphia plaintiffs firm Saltz Mongeluzzi Barrett & Bendesky announced a shift in practice and firm leadership Tuesday, as it brings on a co-founding partner of another prominent trial firm in the region.

Steven Wigrizer, one of the founding partners at Wapner Newman Wigrizer Brecher & Miller, has moved over to Saltz Mongeluzzi, where he will chair the medical malpractice department. Attorney Jason Weiss is making the move with him, as well as some staff.

The practice leadership change comes as firm co-founder and name partner Michael Barrett moves into a new role as chair of the practice and professional development department. In that position, he will lead efforts to develop client and attorney referral relationships, while continuing his practice as a lawyer and partner of the firm.

Founding partner Robert Mongeluzzi noted that large firms, which are mostly on the defense side, have been ahead of most plaintiffs firms in implementing targeted business development strategies and putting professionals in charge of those efforts. As the 33-lawyer firm grows a more national practice, he said, Saltz Mongeluzzi decided it needed to do the same.

"The clients and referral lawyers we work with are too important to have a scattered and diffuse approach to maintaining a connection with them," Mongeluzzi said in an interview Tuesday. "It's important that we had someone whose main job is to manage those relationships, cultivate those relationships. So we began having Michael move more and more into that realm over the last six months."

That opened up the opportunity for Wigrizer to move into the medical malpractice leadership role, he added.

Steven Wigrizer.

Wigrizer has worked closely with Mongeluzzi on multiple cases. The most high-profile was on behalf of 19 people who were killed or injured in the June 2013 building collapse at a Salvation Army store in Philadelphia. The case ended in 2017 with a $227 million settlement during trial in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas—the lawyers involved said that was the largest personal injury settlement ever reached in a Pennsylvania state court. Weiss also worked on that case.

Wigrizer said his departure from Wapner Newman was "somewhat of a surprise" to his former partners, but made sense given his history with Mongeluzzi.

"I thought this was a unique opportunity to work with one of my best friends and a valued colleague in [Mongeluzzi] at a time when both of us are at the top of our game," Wigrizer said. "We've built a very strong foundation at Wapner Newman, and there are a number of people now who will have the opportunity to step up and shine."

Marc Brecher, managing partner of Wapner Newman, acknowledged that Wigrizer will be taking some cases with him, and wished his former partner "the best of luck."

"We are confident as a law firm that we will work out a smooth transition with Steve and Saltz Mongeluzzi," he said. "We don't expect any significant changes to the practice, and we hope to engage in friendly competition with Saltz Mongeluzzi that we have in the past."

Wigrizer noted that he plans to work closely with Barrett in developing the firm's medical malpractice business. The new leadership role, Mongeluzzi said, required talents that Barrett showed in leading the medical malpractice department.

"From a financial standpoint he was going to have even better impact that he was going to have remaining just in medical malpractice," he said. "He has always been a phenomenal business-getter."

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