Marc Fiedler
2001 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Suite 450
Washington, D.C. 20006
(202) 659-5500
Marc Fiedler is the chief appellate lawyer at Koonz, McKenney, Johnson, DePaolis & Lightfoot, LLP. A graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, Mr. Fiedler served as a law clerk to the Honorable James A. Belson of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals before joining our firm in 1985. He has been a partner with the firm since 1994.
Mr. Fiedler has won several important cases that have resulted in the establishment of legal principles favorable to personal-injury victims. For example, in one landmark case, Mr. Fiedler successfully persuaded the District of Columbia Court of Appeals to recognize the right of workers to recover the full measure of their damages, including pain and suffering, for their work-related injuries caused by someone other than their employer. In another significant but controversial case that Mr. Fiedler won, the court ruled that a worker who suffers a stroke on the job is entitled to workers’-compensation benefits. Most recently, Mr. Fiedler has prevailed on appeal in cases involving a blind man who fell from the platform at a Metro subway station and was run over by a careless train operator, a painter who fell and was seriously injured while working atop an unsafe scaffold at the direction of a negligent general contractor, and a worker who was severely burned while removing asbestos from a high-voltage underground electrical cable that the utility company neglected to de-energize. Read a summary of Mr. Fiedler’s appellate victories.
In recognition of his numerous successes at the appellate level, the Trial Lawyers’ Association of Metropolitan Washington, D.C. honored Mr. Fiedler as Lawyer of the Year in 1989, the first attorney in our firm ever to win such an award. From 2001 to 2002, Mr. Fiedler served as President of that organization. He has also served as Co-Chairman of the prestigious appellate-advocacy committee of the Association of Trial Lawyers of America.
Mr. Fiedler is heavily involved in litigating several class actions across the country on behalf of thousands of landowners who have been victimized by the wrongdoing of certain railroad companies and telecommunications companies that have profited from the sale and use of property rightfully belonging to the landowners. Mr. Fiedler has filed pleadings, briefs, motions, and other papers in class actions pending not only in the District of Columbia but also in states such as Ohio and Indiana. These class actions aim to remove the cloud on the title to the landowners’ property and to compensate the landowners for the monetary losses they have suffered on account of the railroad and telecommunications companies’ unlawful claims to and use of the landowners’ property.
In addition to his work on these class actions and his representation of our clients in personal-injury, wrongful-death, and workers’-compensation claims, Mr. Fiedler is a long-time advocate for the rights of people with disabilities. Mr. Fiedler himself is quadriplegic and uses a wheelchair. Nationally recognized as an expert in disability law, Mr. Fiedler has successfully sued several major businesses in the District of Columbia for discrimination against individuals with disabilities, including the AMC movie-theater chain and the Capital Hilton Hotel. His efforts have been written up in the Washington Post, Washington Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today. He has appeared on the Today show, CNN, CBS Evening News, all the local television stations, many local radio stations, as well as National Public Radio and Voice of America. Mr. Fiedler is co-founder and Chairman of the Disability Rights Council of Greater Washington, an organization that educates about and that presses vigorously for enforcement of the legal rights of persons with disabilities. In 2002, the Washington Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs bestowed on him its distinguished Alfred McKenzie Award in honor of his outstanding contribution to the cause of disability rights. That same year, the District of Columbia Courts honored him with its inaugural Trailblazer Award for his efforts to improve courthouse access. Also, Mr. Fiedler has been appointed by the Mayor as a member of the D.C. Building Code Advisory Committee, and for over ten years has been instrumental in rewriting and updating the D.C. Building Code to ensure greater access for persons with disabilities.
Mr. Fiedler works in our D.C. office and resides in the District.
To read Mr. Fiedler’s articles that were published in the Trial Lawyers Association of Metropolitan D.C.’s newsletters please follow these links:
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