Ralph D. Pittle

Ralph is licensed in federal and state courts throughout the State of Washington. He has been specially admitted on a case by case basis in numerous state and federal courts across the United States.

Ralph was born and raised in Newark, New Jersey. Upon graduation from Columbia High School in South Orange, New Jersey, he attended the University of Michigan College of Pharmacy. During a six month’s sabbatical in 1962 he worked in an Organic Chemistry Research Laboratory at Hoffman La Roche Pharmaceutical Company as a research assistant to Dr. Leo Sternbach, the inventor of Valium. (http://www.rocheusa.com/newsroom/current/2003/pr2003052801.html)

After graduating from the University of Michigan in 1966 he worked in a hospital pharmacy at Presbyterian Medical Center in Newark, New Jersey, where he edited and published a Pharmacy Information Newsletter. Following his licensure as a Registered Pharmacist in New Jersey, Ralph attended The American University Washington College of Law in Washington, D.C. where he graduated with honors as Director of the American University Legal Aid Services Program. While attending law school he worked for the American Society of Hospital Pharmacists preparing drug monographs for the ASHP Drug Formulary.

Following law school, Ralph was selected as a law clerk by Chief Justice Orris Hamilton of the Washington State Supreme Court. After that he worked with Daniel Sullivan, Washington’s premier plaintiffs’ medical malpractice attorney at that time and a founder and President of the Washington State Trial Lawyers Association. Ralph is a member of the Washington State Trial Lawyers, the Association of Trial Lawyers of America, the Seattle-King County Bar Association and the Washington State Bar Association. He has served as Public Information Chairman of the .

In 1975 Ralph accepted his first Dalkon Shield case against the A.H. Robins Company and eventually went on to become the State of Washington’s first attorney to win a Dalkon Shield trial with a record setting jury verdict of $650,000 in compensatory damages in one of only five states, which do not allow punitive damages. Eventually his firm was counsel for over 900 Dalkon Shield victims with compensatory claims against the Dalkon Shield Claimants Trust. During the A.H. Robins Bankruptcy Proceedings, Ralph served as legal counsel for the International Dalkon Shield Victims Educations Association (IDEA). With over 30 years of experience, Ralph has represented thousands of clients with cases involving medical malpractice, drug and device product liability and personal injury litigation including breast implants, penile implants, Dalkon Shield IUDs, Copper 7 IUDs, Norplant contraceptive systems and various neurolpetic drugs including, Haldol, Thorazine, Melleril, and Reglan. .

In 1985 Ralph accepted his first case involving drug-induced tardive dyskinesia and eventually became Co-Chairman of the Association of Trial Lawyers of America’s Tardive Dyskinesia Litigation Group. In 1989 Ralph was retained with the first case in the United States against the A.H. Robins Company and American Home Product Corporation involving Reglan-induced tardive dyskinesia. Since then, Ralph’s law firm, Medical Legal Consultants of Washington is the only firm in the country that has conducted complete document and deposition discovery against the A.H. Robins Company, American Home Products Corporation (now known as Wyeth) and multiple manufactures of generic metoclopramide. Ralph has represented numerous Reglan/metoclopramide/medical malpractice victims (both adults and young children) throughout the United States who have successfully resolved cases involving Reglan/metoclopramide-induced injuries. Two of his initial clients in Reglan litigation insisted on retaining all of the documents and deposition discovery that was obtained during the prosecution of their cases and permission to use that discovery in any future case where Medical Legal Consultants of Washington was associated as counsel for the plaintiffs. As a result of the agreement that those clients reached with Robins/American Home Products/Wyeth all additional clients of Medical Legal Consultants of Washington be able to save hundreds of thousands of dollars in litigation expenses. We are the only law firm in the country that has reached this agreement with Robins/American Home Products/Wyeth. Ralph now has 28 years of experience litigating cases involving A.H. Robins Company products.