Attorney Profiles

Since approximately 1980, Daniel J. Sherry has devoted his professional efforts almost exclusively to the defense of health care providers in professional liability matters. He presently serves as the Vice-Chair of the firm's Healthcare Liability Practice Group. He has represented hospitals, physicians, and other health care providers in professional liability claims. He also represents attorneys in professional liability claims.

Dan has been involved in numerous high exposure cases ($1 million or higher) where the defense has involved retention of numerous, sophisticated experts, especially in claims involving brain-injured infants. A number of those cases have proceeded to jury verdict, with defense verdicts being the result in the great majority of cases. Dan has started more than 500 jury trials in his career, and he has tried approximately 350 cases to verdict, including approximately 200 verdicts in the field of medical professional liability. He has secured defense verdicts in approximately 95% of the cases he has tried to verdict.

Marshall, Dennehey, Warner, Coleman & Goggin is very proud of the fact that Dan is a Fellow of the prestigious American College of Trial Lawyers, thereby joining a truly accomplished group of approximately 5,000 lawyers drawn from the United States and Canada. Fellowship is by invitation only and is extended to no more than one percent of the total lawyer population of any state or province. To be invited to be a Fellow is truly a great honor and achievement.

Dan has represented several hospitals in the greater Philadelphia area and also several large physician groups in both Philadelphia and the suburban counties. He is often involved in cases where multiple experts are retained (as many as eight to ten experts) who deal with issues of standard of care, causation, relationship of other medical conditions to the injury in question, life expectancy, damage claims, economic losses, etc. Through the use, including often the complicated coordination of such experts, Dan has secured either settlements or verdicts that are far below the damage claims sought by the plaintiffs.

He handled the trial in the Morehead vs. Crozer Chester Medical Center case which resulted in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling that limited medical damage claims to the amounts actually paid by the patient or his/her insurer, preventing plaintiffs from claiming medical expenses in excess of those actually incurred.

Dan is on the Honorary Board of Trustees for the Radnor Educational Foundation. He is also involved with the Radnor ABC program, which provides a group home setting for academically gifted students from disadvantaged school districts and allows them to be educated at Radnor High School. Dan also serves on the Philadelphia Club of Notre Dame's high school visitation program and is the alumni class representative for St. Joseph's Preparatory High School in Philadelphia.

Dan is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame, where he received his Bachelor of Arts degree in English in 1972. Thereafter, he attended and graduated from the Temple University School of Law in 1975. While in his second year of law school, Dan entered into a clerkship with Marshall, Dennehey, Warner, Coleman & Goggin. Upon graduation from law school and passing the bar examination in October 1975, he began working for the firm as an associate attorney. He was elected a shareholder in the firm in 1982.

Dan served on then Governor-elect Rendell's Task Force on Medical Malpractice, which was a multi-professional group that examined the nature, extent, and cause(s) of the medical malpractice crisis and made recommendations for changes on such issues as venue, expert testimony, MCARE coverage, etc.

Dan is a member of the Pennsylvania, Delaware County, and Chester County Bar Associations. He is also a member of the Pennsylvania Defense Institute, the Defense Research Institute, the International Association of Defense Counsel, and recently was elected as a Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers. He has served as an Arbitrator and Mediator in a number of matters over the years and on two occasions presided over jury trials in Delaware County as a Judge Pro Tem.

Dan has lectured extensively at various Pennsylvania Bar Institute seminars on topics germane to medical professional liability matters, including a number of seminars that he has planned or served as the principal speaker.

Dan was recognized as a Pennsylvania Super Lawyer in 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010, and was designated as one of the top 100 lawyers in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in 2008 and 2009.