Ms. Dean\'s professional experience encompasses a broad range of legal matters. Her primary emphases are civil appeals, estate planning and probate. Her estate planning practice involves helping clients orchestrate their estates by drafting a vast array of trusts, wills and powers of attorney. Ms. Dean also provides compassionate legal advice while assisting families through the probate process. Ms. Dean\'s legal expertise in civil appeals includes both advising at the trial court level and handling all aspects of the appeal. She has handled appeals dealing with complex insurance matters, business matters, personal injury and family law appeals. She has successfully argued in federal and state courts, including the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, on behalf of a major insurance company, corporations, and individuals. She works with trial attorneys and clients to preserve error on the trial court level, preparing legal motions, handling mandamus actions, preparing and arguing the jury charge and handling all post-judgment motions. At the appellate level, Ms. Dean leads the appeal of a judgment, including preparing briefs, petitions for review and briefs on the merits to the Texas Supreme Court, and presenting oral argument before diverse panels of judges. Throughout her career, Ms. Dean has handled other civil matters as well, such as complex commercial litigation, corporate buy-outs, employment and business contracts, consumer issues, family law litigation, adoptions, real estate transactions and personal injury litigation. She successfully negotiated and closed a multi-million dollar buy-out of a snowboard clothing company to a major sporting goods conglomerate. Prior to specializing in appellate law, Ms. Dean engaged in a successful trial practice and as a result, understands the needs of trial attorneys and what it takes to make them successful at the trial level and on appeal.

David J. Dean, who joined the Firm over 20 years ago as a nationally recognized trial attorney, is responsible for trying some of our largest and often most challenging and complex cases. David J. Dean is a senior trial attorney on all matters in the Firm’s practice. Mr. Dean was the Chief Trial Counsel for the plaintiffs in the Agent Orange Class Action, representing more than two million Vietnam Veterans in their claims against seven chemical companies. His work was described in published Federal Court decisions as “extraordinary” and of “exceptional quality.” David’s exceptional trial skills were evident in the civil trial of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, where, as the lead trial attorney, he obtained an unprecedented verdict against the Port Authority for its failure to take steps to prevent the terrorist attack. David won a $92 Million verdict against the city of New York on behalf of a victim of excessive police force. He won a $25 million verdict for a laborer injured at a worksite and a $24.5 million verdict for a man who tripped on the stairs of an apartment building causing him to become a paraplegic. He obtained a verdict against the Transit Authority for $28.5 million for a woman whose leg was severely injured when she was struck by a train. He also won a $19.1 million verdict for a man whose hand was caught in a closing train door. He has obtained many multiple million-dollar verdicts in a number of different types of medical malpractice cases. Such results are only a small sample of his work, which has earned him a respected and feared trial reputation. David has been named in Super Lawyers magazine as one of New York’s top lawyers, and has also been listed in The Best Lawyers in America. A national legal publication recently named David as “one of America’s great trial lawyers.” David has also received the highest rating (AV®) from Martindale-Hubbell Peer Review Ratings.* A 1961 graduate of Georgetown Law Center, David joined the firm in 1997 and has been a Member since 1999. He has often lectured at various law schools and bar associations on all aspects of trial practice.

Area of Practice: Mass Tort Diandra “Fu” Debrosse is a fearless plaintiffs’ attorney who fights unapologetically for individuals and public entities injured by wrongful conduct, whether by defective medical devices, drugs, or cosmetics, environmental contamination, corporate misconduct, or civil rights abuse. Nationally recognized as a powerhouse in mass torts, class actions, products liability, discrimination, and sexual assault claims, Fu has recovered nearly $1 billion in damages for her clients. Blending her exceptional talents in multidistrict and mass tort litigation with state-of-the-art tools, Fu uses sophisticated modeling to identify technology-based and other forms of discrimination, including environmental injustice, defective devices, and unfair insurance practices. As the managing partner of DiCello Levitt’s Birmingham office, co-chair of the firm’s Mass Torts division, and co-chair of its Civil and Human Rights Litigation Practice Group, she holds prominent leadership positions in numerous multidistrict litigations. She is Co-Lead Counsel in the massive products liability multidistrict litigation against two of the world’s largest infant formula manufacturers, Abbott Laboratories and Mead Johnson, and in the MDL against L’Oréal and other makers of disease-causing hair relaxer products marketed primarily to Black and Latina women. Fu also holds leadership positions in several other significant MDLs, including the litigation against Chevron and Syngenta for their marketing and sale of the disease-causing herbicide paraquat, as well as the social media MDL in which the plaintiffs are seeking damages against Meta Platforms, TikTok, YouTube, and others for creating defective products that encourage addictive behavior, resulting in various emotional and physical harms, including death. Fu also leads many systematic civil rights and sexual assault cases; represents the City of Baltimore in legal actions addressing the catastrophic of the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse; and represents dozens of Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Maryland, and North Dakota counties and a number of cities and counties in Maryland, Delaware, and other jurisdictions in two separate prescription opiate MDLs. Fu was recognized by Forbes as one of the top 200 attorneys in the United States in 2024, and The National Law Journal named her to its 2023 list of Elite Women of the Plaintiffs Bar. In 2022, 2023, and 2024, Lawdragon recognized Fu as one of the 500 Leading Consumer Lawyers. Chambers USA 2022 ranked the firm’s Litigation: Mainly Plaintiffs team among the top five in Alabama, and the Birmingham Business Journal honored Fu with a Best of the Bar Award and Who’s Who in Law recognitions in 2021, 2022, and 2023. Fu is a founding member of Shades of Mass, an organization dedicated to encouraging the appointment of Black and brown attorneys in national mass tort actions. She is a board member of Public Justice and the Southern Trial Lawyers Association. Fu previously served as a hearing officer for the Alabama State Bar, held leadership roles in the American Association for Justice and the Alabama Access to Justice Commission, and acted as Alabama State Bar vice president and commissioner. Fu is fluent in French and Haitian Creole and functional in Spanish. Her steadfast pursuit of justice is motivated in large part by her experience as a mother of two extraordinary young girls.

Area of Practice: Civil Litigation, Corporate Law, Labor Law, Aviation Law & Construction Law Carmel J. Decker is a Partner with Harwood Lloyd, practicing in its Insurance Defense Litigation and Commercial Litigation Departments. Ms. Decker concentrates her practice in employment law, civil rights violations, construction law, corporate and contract law and insurance law. Ms. Decker’s employment law practice includes complex litigation in state and federal courts involving wrongful termination, sexual harassment/hostile work environment, discrimination, retaliation, breach of contract, corporate and business law, common-law claims, ERISA, CEPA, the New Jersey Law against Discrimination, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, hiring practices, restrictive covenants, employee handbooks and workplace torts. Ms. Decker represents companies, public entities and public employees in matters involving civil rights violations, negligence and police conduct. Ms. Decker also handles matters involving directors’ and officers’ liability, particularly employment and civil rights disputes. Ms. Decker lectures on employment matters including sexual harassment/hostile work environment discrimination, hiring practices and litigation of employment issues. Ms. Decker drafts employee handbooks, counsels clients on risk management and regulatory compliance and provides preventive counseling to employers on employment issues. Ms. Decker also appears in matters before the New Jersey Division on Civil Rights and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Ms. Decker’s construction law practice includes complex multi-party litigation involving claims of construction defect, professional liability of architects and engineers and construction site accidents. As part of her construction defect practice, Ms. Decker handles matters involving claims of deficiencies in construction and design, latent construction defects, building code violations, breach of contract and insurance. Ms. Decker’s construction law practice encompasses matters arising on public, private, commercial and residential projects. Ms. Decker received her B.S., cum laude, in Business Administration from Montclair State College in 1978 and her J.D. from Seton Hall University School of Law in 1981. Ms. Decker is admitted to practice before the courts of the State of New Jersey (1982), the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey (1982) and the courts of the State of New York (1989). Ms. Decker is a member of the Federal Bar Association, the Bergen County Bar Association and the Professional Liability Underwriting Society.