Our Attorneys

"Courts and the application of equal justice under the law protect us all as individuals against the powerful. Without this, we are at the mercy of big business, big government and big money. My motivation exists in compassion for our hurt clients seeking justice, who have been injured by the powerful, the greedy or the careless."

Gregory J. Bubalo, Managing Partner, is Board Certified in Civil Trial Advocacy by the National Board of Trial Advocacy ("NBTA")*. He is listed in The Best Lawyers in America® 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012 and profiled in the publication Kentucky's Best Lawyers (Copyright Woodward/White, Inc., of Aiken, S.C.). Mr. Bubalo is qualified by his peers as AV, the highest possible rating by the legal publisher Martindale-Hubbell. In 2009, he was again elected to the Kentucky Justice Association's Board of Governors. He is a member of The Multi-Million Dollar Advocates Forum . He is admitted to the bars of the Supreme Courts for the Commonwealth of Kentucky and the State of Indiana, to the United States District Courts for the Eastern and Western Districts of Kentucky, the Northern and Southern Districts of Indiana, and the United States Courts of Appeal for the 6th and 7th Circuits.

Mr. Bubalo was born in Evansville, Indiana, and he graduated Magna Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Illinois College. He graduated Magna Cum Laude from Indiana University School of Law, where he served as an Associate Editor and then Note and Development Editor for the Indiana Law Review. Following law school, Mr. Bubalo practiced as an associate with Greenebaum, Doll & McDonald . He then joined the firm of Ogden, Newell & Welch (presently Stoll Keenan Ogden, PLC) where he became a partner and practiced law until July 1995 defending physicians in medical malpractice actions and appearing in complex commercial cases.

In July, 1995, Mr. Bubalo became "Of Counsel" at Ogden, while primarily serving as Vice President and General Counsel for Paradigm Insurance Company as well as President of its subsidiary, Universal Fire and Casualty Company. Working for these companies, he supervised a network of lawyers in over thirty (30) states involving both personal injury and corporate cases.

In June, 1999, Mr. Bubalo was invited by Gary Becker to become Assistant Managing Partner for the Becker Law Office. There, he helped manage the firm but primarily served as the Lead Trial Attorney, now representing injured people and small businesses, and routinely opposing large companies, especially insurance companies.

After Mr. Becker's retirement in 2004, Mr. Bubalo established his current firm, Bubalo Rotman, to continue his personal injury and general trial practice. Mr. Bubalo serves as the Managing Partner. Attorneys in the firm are admitted to practice in Kentucky, Massachusetts, Indiana and Tennessee, and also practice cases in many other states and courts across the country.

Following are a few examples of cases that Mr. Bubalo has handled:

In Loomis v. St. Mary's Hospital, he was Lead Trial Attorney, resulting in one of the largest personal injury verdicts recorded in the State of Indiana. Mr. Bubalo sought compensation for a neurosurgeon who was injured, resulting in Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy ("RSD"), also generally known as Complex Regional Pain Syndrome ("CRPS"). The Judgment for almost $17,000,000 was unanimously affirmed by the Indiana Court of Appeals in St. Mary's Medical Center of Evansville, Inc. v. Loomis, 783 N.E.2d 274 (Ind. App. 2003). View full opinion of the Indiana Court of Appeals.

Since 1999, Mr. Bubalo frequently has represented people injured by defective drugs. Some recent cases include his appearance in October, 2008 as co-counsel in Stribling v. Wyeth, Superior Court of New Jersey, Bergen County, Docket No.: BER-L-2352-07 MT. Mr. Bubalo presented technical pharmacological evidence to the jury, which awarded Mrs. Stribling $3,000,000 for pain and suffering damages. The jury found that the defendant Wyeth, "intentionally concealed from the FDA knowledge of the harmful effects," of its drugs. View Stribling verdict. Similarly, in early 2009, Mr. Bubalo was trial counsel in Kohler v. Wyeth, Superior Court of the State of California, County of Los Angeles, Central Civil West, Diet Drug Case No. DD 004290. The trial sought damages for a young lawyer who had taken Wyeth's defective drugs, causing her to suffer from the progressive and eventually fatal disease, Primary Pulmonary Hypertension ("PPH"). The trial was broadcast streaming live on the web via www.courtroomview.com, between 3/4/09 to 4/22/09. A mutual resolution of the case was reached by the parties and recorded under seal by Judge Mohr shortly after the start of Defendant Wyeth's proof.

Mr. Bubalo's clients are his ultimate concern. View client thank you letter.

He and his wife have one child and are members of Christ Church United Methodist in Louisville, Kentucky.

*Kentucky law does not certify specialties in legal fields.

"We have the best legal system in the world because it is based in the dignity of the individual, and the right of the individual to receive justice before the law. This is truly something worth fighting for, passionately, and the reason I became an attorney."

Steven B. Rotman, Partner, is based in the Boston office and has more than 25 years of litigation experience. He practices primarily in the areas of pharmaceutical and malpractice litigation. He graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard University and earned his Juris Doctor from the University of Virginia. Mr. Rotman is admitted to practice law in the District of Columbia, Florida, Kentucky and Massachusetts. He is also admitted to practice before the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Prior to joining Bubalo Rotman, he was a partner with Robinson & Cole in Boston.

Mr. Rotman has a strong background in complex products liability cases including ten years of experience in pharmaceutical mass tort and medical negligence cases. Mr. Rotman has been invited to speak at local Bar Association and national legal conferences on the subjects of electronic evidence, medical evidence, and proving causation in pharmaceutical cases. Mr. Rotman has served on the plaintiffs' discovery and science committees in pharmaceutical products multi- district litigation. He is the author of an article entitled "Don't Know Much About Epidemiology?" published in Trial Magazine in September, 2007, and co-author of an article entitled "Knock Down Generic Drug Makers Defenses" published in Trial in June, 2010.

Mr. Rotman is a member of the Massachusetts and the Boston Bar Associations and the Litigation Section for both. He is also a member of the American Association for Justice, where he has served as chair of the Daubert Litigation Group and chair of the Expert Witness Admissibility Litigation Group.

Mr. Rotman is married and has four children.

Christopher Goode

"It is truly an honor to represent people who, through no fault of their own, are often at one of the most vulnerable points in their lives, financially and emotionally. This is why I am proud to say I am a trial lawyer."

Christopher W. Goode, Partner, is based in the Lexington office and splitting his time between the Lexington and Louisville offices. He practices in the areas of personal injury, products liability, and medical malpractice litigation. Mr. Goode is qualified by his peers as AV, the highest possible rating by the legal publisher Martindale-Hubbell. He earned his undergraduate degree from Northern Illinois University and his J.D. degree from DePaul University.

Mr. Goode is admitted to practice in Kentucky and before the U.S. District Courts of Eastern and Western Districts of Kentucky, the Southern District of Indiana and the Northern District of Illinois; the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit; and before the U.S. Supreme Court. He is a member of the Kentucky, Louisville and Fayette County Bar Associations, American Association for Justice (AAJ), Kentucky Justice Association. Mr. Goode is also a member of The Million Dollar Advocates Forum.

Mr. Goode is the current president of the Fayette County Bar Association. He is the immediate past Chair of the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government Ethics Commission. He is a Founding Fellow of the Fayette County Bar Foundation and a past President of the Young Lawyers Section of the Fayette County Bar Association. In 2005, Mr. Goode received the Fayette County Outstanding Young Lawyer award. (FCBA President's Message: July/Aug 2011; Sep/Oct 2011)

Read Goode's Bar News Column

Along with his wife, Mr. Goode is very active in community outreach and service projects. He also plays trumpet with various music groups in Lexington and the surrounding communities.

Paula S. Bliss, Partner, is based in the Boston office. She focuses her practice on all aspects of civil litigation involving catastrophic injuries, primarily pharmaceutical and medical device mass tort litigation, wrongful death, medical malpractice and personal injury actions. Ms. Bliss was selected as a Massachusetts Super Lawyers "Rising Star" four years in a row.

Prior to joining Bubalo Rotman in 2007, Ms. Bliss practiced in a large New England firm where she litigated cases involving catastrophically injured plaintiffs across the country in various pharmaceutical mass tort litigations, These included diet drugs, phenylpropanolamine, ephedra, Duragesic pain patches, and individual personal injury and medical malpractice lawsuits. Ms. Bliss has extensive experience in every facet of complex tort litigation from fact and expert witness discovery to Daubert litigation and preparation for and participation in trials. She manages litigation projects involving dozens of individual complex tort cases.

Drawing from her experience in sophisticated expert witness discovery and Daubert challenges, Ms. Bliss authored the publication "What to Expect in High Stakes Litigation" (SEAK, 2005), which has been read by and presented to hundreds of scientific and medical testifying experts. Ms. Bliss appears in court on civil litigation matters, summary judgment and Daubert hearings, pre-trial conferences, medical malpractice tribunals and discovery and evidentiary motion argument. Ms. Bliss has successfully negotiated significant pre-suit personal injury settlements and mediated several pharmaceutical liability tort actions.

A member of the Bar of Massachusetts since 2002, Ms. Bliss is also a member of the American Association for Justice (AAJ), the Massachusetts Academy of Trial Attorneys, and is a pro bono attorney with the Women's Bar Foundation representing victims of domestic violence in probate matters.

Ms. Bliss received her J.D. from Northeastern University School of Law and earned her bachelor's degree from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Ms. Bliss currently lives just outside Boston, MA with her husband and two children.

Leslie Cronen is an associate in the Louisville office. She joined the firm in July of 2006 and concentrates her practice in the areas of wrongful death, medical malpractice, pharmaceutical liability and mass tort litigation on behalf of injured individuals. She is experienced in all aspects of civil litigation, including pre-suit activities, pre-trial discovery, trials and appeals. Prior to joining Bubalo Rotman, Ms. Cronen practiced with two premier insurance defense firms, primarily representing physicians and hospitals in medical malpractice cases across Kentucky.

Leslie received her J.D., with honors, from the Louis D. Brandeis School of Law at the University of Louisville. There she was involved in the Law Review, Moot Court and honor council. She earned her undergraduate degree from the University of Louisville. She is admitted to practice in Kentucky and Indiana, and to practice before the U.S. District Courts of Eastern and Western Kentucky and of Northern and Southern Indiana. Leslie is a member of the American Bar Association, Kentucky Bar Association, Louisville Bar Association, Kentucky Justice Association and American Association for Justice (AAJ). She is a Leadership Academy Fellow and completed a two year term as an Associate Member of the Brandeis Inn of Court.

Ms. Cronen was once featured on a television news report because she was having her hair cut off for cancer patients. It was a St. Baldrick event, which involves people volunteering to have their heads shaved or hair cut to honor cancer survivors who lose their hair during chemotherapy. It also provides real hair to make wigs for cancer patients. The organization that collects the hair and provides wigs is called Locks of Love. Ms. Cronen and her husband have two young children and are very active in school, church and community activities.

Stacy Hullett Ivey is an associate in the Lexington office. She is admitted to practice law in Kentucky and she is also admitted to the U.S. District Courts of the Eastern and Western Districts in Kentucky. Ms Ivey obtained her Juris Doctor degree from the University of Kentucky College of Law in 2007, where she was actively involved with moot court. After graduating from law school, she began her practice with a Lexington personal injury law firm. She joined Bubalo Rotman in 2009, where she continues her focus on personal injury litigation and workers compensation.

Ms. Ivey is an active member of the Kentucky Justice Association (KJA), serving on the Board of Directors and the Young Lawyers' Board. She is the editor of the workers compensation section of The Advocate, KJA's bimonthly magazine which features articles about new Kentucky cases, verdicts and settlements, practice tips, as well as many other timely issues. She is also a member of the Kentucky Bar Association, Fayette County Bar Association, Louisville Bar Association, and the American Association for Justice.

Ms. Ivey grew up on a farm outside Bowling Green, Kentucky. She obtained her undergraduate degree Magna Cum Laude from Western Kentucky University in Government and Animal Science with emphasis in Equine Studies. While at WKU, she was a member of the 1994 IHSA Reserve National Champion Equestrian Team. Following her undergraduate studies, she trained American Quarter Horses for seven years, working for various horse farms across the eastern U.S. During her years of training horses, Ms. Ivey always told the people she met that she would probably go to law school some day, and in 2004 she did just that.

She and her husband have one child.

Julie S. Ferraro is an associate in the Boston office. She focuses her practice in pharmaceutical litigation, civil litigation and women's rights cases. She is admitted to practice law in Massachusetts and Florida.

Prior to joining Bubalo Rotman, Ms. Ferraro practiced in a large multi-jurisdiction firm. She has litigated in a Hormone Replacement Therapy trial team including participating in a landmark trial in Arkansas, in which the first Federal Court decision resulted in a $27 Million verdict. She has experience settling Vioxx cases and litigating cases involving Reglan, Avandia, Levaquin, Paxil and Yaz. She also held the lead role in a previous firm's participation in a Gulf Oil Spill joint venture litigation. In addition, Ms. Ferraro is very committed to women's safety issues and has represented a number of women who have suffered emotional, physical or sexual abuse.

Ms. Ferraro received her J.D. from New England School of Law and her bachelor's degree from Northeastern University. She is an active member in the American Association for Justice where she is involved in the Women's Caucus and she is a member of the Massachusetts Bar Association. In 2009 and 2010, Julie was selected as a Massachusetts Rising Star by Super Lawyer magazine. The distinction is awarded to top attorneys under the age of 40 with no more than five percent of the state's attorneys selected.