Jonathan R. Gdanski

Jonathan R. Gdanski is a trial attorney at Schlesinger Law Offices, P.A., where he has practiced since graduating from the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in 2006. His practice is devoted entirely to complex civil trials, with a particular focus on catastrophic personal injury, products liability, wrongful death, and consumer protection cases. He has tried more than 40 cases to verdict — virtually all of them multi-week, complex trials — and has obtained verdicts and judgments totaling in excess of $350,000,000, with collected judgments exceeding $130,000,000.

2026 Highlights

In 2026 alone, Jonathan has obtained verdicts and settlements in excess of $75,000,000.

July 2026: A Broward County jury awarded $5,605,000 to Valeria Mardy, a newspaper carrier trapped alone in a condominium elevator for more than three hours while security personnel abandoned their posts. Jonathan served as lead counsel in Mardy v. Marksman Security Corp.

July 2026: The United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit issued its decision in Dunn, et al. v. Santa Fe Natural Tobacco Company, Inc., et al. (10th Cir. July 29, 2026) — reversing the district court’s denial of class certification for purchasers of Natural American Spirit cigarettes in eleven states. Schlesinger Law Offices serves as lead counsel in the litigation, and Jonathan serves on the Executive, Discovery, Expert Witness, and Trial Committees of the MDL, appointed by U.S. District Judge James Browning (D.N.M.) in 2017.

May 2026: A Charlotte County jury returned a $6,427,066 verdict in Jarvis v. Yaege, Vakil & Foot & Ankle Centers of Charlotte County, P.A., a medical malpractice case in which Jonathan served as lead counsel. The jury found both defendant podiatrists 100% at fault after a patient underwent a below-knee amputation following their failure to recognize and treat a progressing MRSA infection.

May 2026: Jonathan represented social media influencer Sophie Hall in a civil lawsuit against former Miami Dolphins wide receiver Tyreek Hill. Hall alleged that she broke her leg during a backyard football drill at his Southwest Ranches home.

April 2026: Jonathan resolved a wrongful death case on behalf of the family of Edgar Monserratt Martinez, an 18-year-old killed as a passenger in a 2014 Tesla Model S traveling at 116 mph when it struck a concrete wall and erupted in flames. The lawsuit alleged that a Tesla technician disabled a speed limiter the vehicle owner had specifically requested, without parental knowledge or consent. The case was resolved at the start of trial.

Landmark Verdicts

Jonathan’s trial record includes some of the most significant verdicts in Florida’s history of products liability and personal injury litigation.

In 2012, he served as co-lead counsel in Calloway v. R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., et al., resulting in a $75,000,000 jury verdict — the first case in which one individual smoker prevailed against all four major tobacco companies simultaneously. That same year he was appointed Plaintiff’s Liaison Counsel for all tobacco cases pending in Broward County, coordinating hundreds of Engle-progeny cases.

More recently, Jonathan and the Schlesinger firm obtained a $157,000,000 verdict in Rintoul v. R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company — the first same-sex wrongful death case ever tried in the United States.

Other notable results include a $41,000,000 bicycle accident verdict, a $37,851,701 tobacco verdict, additional tobacco verdicts of $37,000,000 and $35,000,000, a $20,000,000 tobacco verdict, a $12,000,000 tobacco verdict, a $10,000,000 medical malpractice settlement, a $6,000,000 medical malpractice settlement, and a $6,000,000 false imprisonment verdict, among numerous other multi-million dollar outcomes.

Practice Depth and National Recognition

Jonathan has built a deliberately diverse practice, making a conscious early-career decision never to allow any single category of litigation, including tobacco, to dominate his workload.

In 2007, Jonathan represented 1,250 claimants in the Engle Trust Fund, resulting in a net recovery of over $10,000,000.

In 2009, he and Scott Schlesinger obtained class certification in the Southern District of Florida in the Lexus ES 350 litigation, resulting in a nationwide settlement covering more than 100,000 vehicle owners.

In 2011, he successfully tried a food poisoning case in federal court in South Florida.

In 2019, U.S. District Judge William Orrick appointed Jonathan to the Plaintiff’s Steering Committee overseeing all JUUL e-cigarette products liability litigation in federal court — MDL No. 2913 (N.D. Cal.) — after receiving dozens of applications from attorneys across the country.

Jonathan has also contributed to the academic literature on tobacco liability, publishing a peer-reviewed article in Nicotine & Tobacco Research (Oxford University Press, 2019) on the history of tobacco warning labels and the industry’s role in shaping them. His work and cases have been covered by CNN, USA Today, Law.com, and Bloomberg News.

Recognition

• Lawdragon 500 Leading Plaintiff Consumer Lawyers — 2021, 2026
• Super Lawyers® Rising Stars — 2014–2019 (Personal Injury: Products & General)
• Martindale-Hubbell Peer Review Rating: AV Preeminent (5.0)

Community and Professional Involvement

Jonathan is a member of the American Association for Justice, the Florida Justice Association, the Broward County Trial Lawyers Association, the Broward County Justice Association, the National Trial Lawyers, the Attorney Information Exchange Group (AIEG), and the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco (SRNT). He serves on the Board of Directors of Beth Israel Congregation in Miami Beach, where he lives with his wife Rachel and their four children.