Andrew Chirls, Esq.

Andrew Chirls has been trying a broad variety of business and tort cases for more than 25 years. A graduate of the University of California (Boalt Hall) School of Law, Mr. Chirls served as a clerk for the United States District Court in New Jersey for a year, and then spent 25 years litigating at Wolf, Block, Schorr and Solis-Cohen, where he was a partner from 1989 to 2009.

Mr. Chirls has been class counsel in securities cases, and was the representative of the AHP Settlement Trust, which administered a $4.3 billion class settlement arising from marketing of the diet drug combination known as Fen Phen. He was the first lawyer to represent a plaintiff in an AIDS or HIV discrimination case presented to a jury in Pennsylvania, and was lead counsel in a class action involving exposure to toxic metals at a dialysis clinic.

In the field of business law, Mr. Chirls has tried several contract cases arising from mergers, acquisitions and dissolutions. Also active in employment law, Mr. Chirls has litigated cases of wrongful discharge and discrimination involving individual employees and group reductions in force.

Mr. Chirls is recognized as an authority in the field of property rights and condemnation law, involving the Constitutional rights of property owners when governments and utility companies take property for public projects. He has taught courses and written treatises on the field of condemnation law.

Mr. Chirls is a leader in the legal profession and his community. He was Chancellor of the13,000 member Philadelphia Bar Association in 2005, and now serves on the American Law Institute and on the diversity committee of the National Conference of Bar Presidents. He was chairman of the Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations. He is president of Philadelphia-based BalletX. In the opinion of some of his friends, he plays cocktail lounge piano at a respectable level, and he has a life list of 329 North American birds that he has identified.