David Berger, a renowned Philadelphia trial lawyer, passed away on February 22, 2007.  Mr. Berger, who was 94 and retired in Palm Beach Florida, died of complications due to pneumonia.

Born in the small town of Archbald, in upstate Pennsylvania to Jewish immigrants, Mr. Berger had a distinguished legal career spanning more than 60 years, which was filled with many notable accomplishments.  Indeed, Mr. Berger is often referred to as one of the fathers of the modern class action, having been one of the first lawyers in the United States to apply the class action rule in the federal courts to antitrust violations.  Beginning in 1963, he commenced a series of class action cases alleging price-fixing manufacturers of a wide range of industrial products, including rock salt, cast iron railroad wheels, concrete pipes and copper tubing.  One of his most influential cases was a nationwide class action brought in the 1970s on behalf of individual gasoline station lessee-dealers against all the major oil companies (Bogosian v. Gulf Oil Co.).  In Bogosian, the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals clarified in plaintiffs’ favor the ability to maintain nationwide class actions. He then was instrumental in expanding class actions effectively into other areas of the law, such as property losses by victims of the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island in 1978.

Mr. Berger graduated from the University of Pennsylvania Law School in 1936, first in his class, Order of the Coif.  He was a member of the University of Pennsylvania Law Review.  Because of his academic distinction, he served from 1936-38 as Special Assistant to the Dean of the Law School and Assistant to Professor Frances H. Bohlen and Dr. William Draper Lewis, Director of American Law Institute and in which capacity he worked on the First Restatement of Torts.  He later served as a law clerk for the Pennsylvania Supreme Court and later for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.

Mr. Berger served with high distinction as an officer in the United States Navy in combat in the South Pacific Theater on the USS Enterprise, USS Hornet and the USS Franklin and then served on the personal staff of Admiral William F. Halsey, Commander of the South Pacific Theater of Naval Operations.  For his service, Mr. Berger was awarded the Silver Star and Presidential Unit Citation.  After returning from World War II,  Mr. Berger began his noted legal career in Philadelphia.

In 1956, he was asked by then Mayor Richardson Dilworth to head the City’s Law Department as City Solicitor.  As chief lawyer for the City, and as a key advisor of Mayor Dilworth, Mr. Berger played a major role in the post-war political revival and urban renewal of Philadelphia.  He was instrumental in establishing major public institutions in Philadelphia including the Philadelphia Industrial Development Corporation (“PIDC”) and Southeastern Pennsylvania Transit Authority (“SEPTA”), the latter of which is responsible for overseeing and operating all public transportation in the greater Philadelphia metropolitan area.  He was later appointed by President Kennedy to a committee to develop high speed rail lines between Washington and Boston, which became Amtrak.  

In 1963, Mr. Berger stepped down from his position as City Solicitor and returned to private law practice.  At that point, he and Harold Kohn, another renowned Philadelphia trial lawyer, pioneered the class action procedure, ushering in a new era of complex civil litigation in this country by filing class actions under the federal antitrust laws.  These efforts led directly to the establishment of the field of complex civil litigation from the plaintiffs’ perspective. 

Mr. Berger was the Democratic nominee for District Attorney in Philadelphia in 1969 and thereafter remained active in Democratic party politics in Philadelphia and nationally.   

In 1970, Mr. Berger started his own law firm which eventually became the law firm of Berger & Montague, P.C.  Berger & Montague would soon become one of the preeminent plaintiffs’ law firms in the country in the areas of antitrust, securities, environmental, consumer protection and civil and human rights litigation.

Mr. Berger and his firm accomplished numerous successes in these fields and were responsible for establishing important legal precedents which have permitted states, municipalities and individual consumers and citizens to obtain legal redress from harms to their persons or property.  These protections, which Mr. Berger helped create and strengthen, represent a major contribution to the civil justice system in the United States, regarded as the most effective in the world.   Among the cases he and his firm litigated were the Three Mile Island Nuclear Accident Litigation, Penn Central Railroad Reorganization, the Boesky/Drexel Burnham/Milken Securities Litigation and the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Litigation.

Mr. Berger was a member of many professional committees and received numerous awards for his outstanding professional achievements.  The United States Supreme Court appointed him to its committee to draft the Federal Rules of Evidence.  He was a fellow in American College of Trial Lawyers, the International Society of Barristers and the International Academy of Trial Lawyers.  He was a life member of the Judicial Conference of the Third Circuit and the American Law Institute.  He also was Chancellor of the Philadelphia Bar Association.  Mr. Berger, a life long political progressive, was appointed to serve as a member of the United States Holocaust Commission by President Clinton.  He also was a member of the Board of Overseers of the University of Pennsylvania Law School and an associate trustee of the University.

Mr. Berger is survived by his two sons, Jonathan and Daniel, his former wife Harriet Fleisher Berger, two grandchildren Michael and Erika Berger, two brothers Harold and Joseph and daughter-in-law Linda Walter Berger.