No. of offices 5 Date founded 1919 (New Jersey) Founded 1919 Number of offices 5 | No. of attorneys 150 Number of attorneys 150 Company type Professional association | |
 | ||
Major practice areas General Practice (Business and Personal Services) Headquarters Woodbridge, New Jersey, United States Profiles | ||
Wilentz, Goldman & Spitzer is a law firm in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern United States with headquarters in Woodbridge, New Jersey, and other offices in New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania. The firm presently has approximately 150 attorneys in various business and personal practice areas.
The firm traces its origins to the law office founded in 1919 in Perth Amboy by David T. Wilentz, G. George Goldman and Henry Spitzer. Founder David Wilentz is best remembered as the Attorney General of New Jersey who in 1935 prosecuted Bruno Hauptmann for the kidnap and murder of the son of aviator Charles Lindbergh. His son, Robert Wilentz, who also was a partner in the firm, was Chief Justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court from 1979 to 1996.
The Wilentz firm has gained a reputation for its representation of plaintiffs in mass tort and product liability cases, including a lawsuit against a large tobacco company that led in 1988 to a jury awarding $400,000 in damages to the heirs of Rose Cipollone, a heavy smoker who had died of lung cancer. This was first time a U.S. court granted a monetary award in a case involving death from smoking. The ruling was reversed on appeal by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1992 (see Cipollone v. Liggett Group, Inc.), and in 1993 the firm stopped representing consumers in tobacco cases.
As of 2003, the firm ranked 236th in size among United States law firms. In 2009, the firm yield $210,345 in profit per partner.