Paul K. Leary, Jr., is a member in Cozen O’Connor’s Litigation Department. He joined the firm in 1998 as a commercial litigator in the New York office and moved to the Philadelphia office in 2000. He serves on the firm’s board of directors election committee and is chair of the Transportation & Logistics group. He concentrates his practice in complex commercial and general litigation matters.

Paul serves as a national coordinating counsel for multinational companies in the retail, transportation, health care, hospitality and product manufacturing sectors. He has litigated and successfully tried to verdict catastrophic product liability matters, toxic tort actions, complex commercial transactions and derivative and class action lawsuits throughout the United States. He currently serves as lead counsel in the defense of mass tort litigation involving dietary supplements. In his role as national coordinating counsel, Paul partners with his clients to leam every aspect of their business to help facilitate risk management protocols, employee training, contract drafting and negotiations, non-disclosure agreements, emergency response protocols and litigation/trial strategy. Some of his noteworthy matters include a successfully tried case of first impression in Eastern District, Pennsylvania involving a multifamily plane crash, representation of a multinational hotel corporation in connection with the bombing of an Islamabad hotel, representation of board of directors in several derivative action lawsuits, and successful defense of a $60 million products claim arising from alleged contamination of a sterilization unit at a North Carolina hospital.

Paul currently serves as a board of director for the Philadelphia Police Foundation and St. Ignatius Nursing Home, a director on the Membership Development Committee for Philadelphia Country Club and mentor for the Haverford Hawks ice hockey program and Cristo Rey educational program. He received his Bachelor of Arts from Fairfield University, where he was awarded the ECAC Medal of Merit. He eamed his law degree from Pace University School of Law. Paul is a graduate of the FBI’s Honors Intern Program and eamed a trial certificate from the IADC Trial Academy at Stanford Law School.

In 2007, Paul was named a “Pennsylvania Super Lawyer — Rising Star by Law & Politics. In 2008, Paul was accepted for membership in the International Association of Defense Counsel (IADC). In 2009, he was selected as a 40 Under 40 receipt by the Philadelphia Business Journal. to 2012 and 2013, he was listed as one of Pennsylvania Super Lawyers.

Experience

Represented a large international financial institution (“Bank”) in litigation involving the enforcement of an interest rate swap between the Bank and a large central Pennsylvania area school district. After the swap agreements were executed and performed under for some time, the school district filed a declaratory judgment action to void the agreements, in an attempt to avoid payment of a significant termination fee. An issue of first impression involving cross motions for summary judgment, the federal court in Harrisburg ruled against the school district’s argument that the agreements were unenforceable because the related bonds had never been issued.