Theresa Blanco (She/Her), Firm Partner
@tblanco408 (tweets are my own)
The attorney you choose makes a difference. In medical malpractice litigation, it is the most important decision you will make. Theresa Blanco has the kind of experience and compassion that will see you through the case, beginning to end. The daughter of dedicated high-school teachers, she was the first American-born member of her father’s family, who emigrated from Cuba as refugees in the early 1960’s. She attended American University in Washington, DC on a full academic scholarship funded by the National Hispanic Scholarship Fund, and Temple University Law School – Evening Division so she could work full time during the day to pay for school.
It was at Temple Law that she found her niche in not only trial law, but medical malpractice. A chance schedule change put her in a class taught by the esteemed health law professor, Frank McClellan, and a lot of hard work won her the Trial Advocacy Award for her class. She hit the ground running after graduation working with Eaton & McClellan, with a series of cases which changed the way medical malpractice cases are litigated, how patients and families are compensated, and how cases against hospitals are proven.1 Admitted to the Pennsylvania Bar in 1996, she has spent the last 25 years litigating medical malpractice cases not only in Pennsylvania, but all over the country. Theresa has a particular expertise in cardiac cases, and has consulted on and handled numerous pediatric heart cases in state and federal courts nationwide. She also has a particular interest in pediatric cases which make up a large portion of her work.
As more medical records have become computerized over the last ten years, Theresa has been at the cutting edge of interpreting these records and the data behind them to the advantage of her clients, and was one of the first attorneys in Pennsylvania to routinely obtain this data in each case. The details matter and it is the details that will make a case successful. Theresa’s attention to those details and her knowledge of how to utilize them will make all the difference in your case.
Not only is she relentless in the pursuit of justice for her clients, Theresa is dedicated to taking the cases that expose health care inequities and discrimination. She was one of the first attorneys to bring claims under the federal Rehabilitation Act in a malpractice case as a result of alleged disparate treatment of disabled children in a hospital.
Theresa is an advocate and an ally and she will have your back. You can count on it.
1 Whittington v. Episcopal Hospital, 768 A.2d 1144 (Pa. Super 2001) (upholding trial court admission of corporate negligence testimony and the standards therefor); Law v. Zuckerman, 307 F. Supp. 2d 105 (D. Md. 2004) (establishing in case of first impression that HIPAA protects plaintiffs from defense counsel’s ex parte discussions with treating physicians, despite state law to the contrary); Taylor v. Einstein Med. Ctr., 723 A. 2d 1027 (Pa. 1998) (holding that physician who lied about experience doing medical procedure violated informed consent when he performed the procedure on a child, and that punitive damages are available for resulting intentional infliction of emotional distress).
