Mary M. Koch

Mary McNamara Koch joined WVFO as a partner in January of 2016. Shortly after her arrival, she obtained Plaintiffs’ verdicts in two medical negligence cases, with one jury awarding a stroke victim over $6.7 million and another jury awarding a woman with debilitating drop foot $2.3 million. Most recently she, along with Keith Forman and Sarah Smith, tried a birth injury case that resulted in the largest medical malpractice verdict in U.S. history, $229 million dollars on behalf of a brain injured child.

In 2014, Ms. Koch spearheaded a team of attorneys that successfully negotiated the historic $37 million settlement against a hospital on behalf of former cardiac patients who received unnecessary cardiac stent procedures. As part of this landmark victory, Ms. Koch conducted over 100 depositions and successfully argued for class certification. The settlement helped establish a national dialogue on unnecessary medical procedures.

In 2010, Ms. Koch orchestrated a $34.33 million verdict (one of the nation’s top ten largest that year) in Wynn et al. v. MJ Harbor Hotel, LLC, commonly referred to as the “Pier V case” that brought the Baltimore-based hotel management group to justice after restaurant employees were poisoned by carbon monoxide.

After graduating from University of Baltimore School of Law in 1988, Ms. Koch proceeded straight to the courtroom. Her first position was as an Assistant State’s Attorney in Baltimore City, where she argued her first case within days of being hired. During her 11 years in that office she won over 100 felony jury trials, losing just one. In 1997, she was designated as a Special Assistant United States Attorney.