Attorney Profiles
Established in 2000, Gordon & Wolf, Chartered is comprised of experienced lawyers who have tried cases and received unprecedented results throughout the United States. With over 50 years of experience, the attorneys of Gordon & Wolf work to protect the rights of consumers nationwide in state and federal courts.
Find out more about the firm’s lawyers by reviewing their personal biographies:
Contact Gordon & Wolf
The lawyers of Gordon & Wolf can be reached online or at 410-825-2300. Contact the law firm's Towson, MD office for additional information about the attorneys' backgrounds and qualifications.
Richard S. Gordon, Principal
Richard Gordon has more than 20 years of experience as a litigation and trial lawyer representing consumers, the poor and the underrepresented. Since the beginning of his legal career in 1989, Mr. Gordon has taken on the causes of underdogs, against the government and corporations throughout the United States. In fact, in the first law suit that Mr. Gordon ever filed as lead counsel – only a year out of law school – he sued all of the Judges in Maryland for refusing to permit poor people to obtain divorce judgments without the payment of Court costs, despite a ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court that such a practice violated the Federal Constitution. That bold action lead to swift changes in the Maryland Court system and the Maryland Rules. Mr. Gordon is not afraid to challenge the existing power structure if it will correct an injustice.
Over the past 20 years, Mr. Gordon has served as Lead Counsel in dozens of complex and class action cases on behalf of consumers, minorities, disable children, migrant workers and businesses. He has obtained multi-million dollar verdicts on behalf of his clients and, in all, has recovered and returned several hundred million dollars to those in society who have been wronged, harmed or taken advantage of. The cable industry, insurance companies, car dealers, finance companies and some of the largest mortgage lenders in the country, are among the companies whose wrongful and illegal actions have been the target of Mr. Gordon's litigation.
Mr. Gordon and Gordon & Wolf, Chtd. are known and recognized nationally for their innovative and relentless approach to complex litigation that relies upon rigorous analysis, sound judgment and litigation skills. Because of its success, Mr. Gordon's law firm has received numerous national and local awards including the 2010 National Consumer Attorneys of the Year presented by the National Association of Consumer Advocates. And even though the firm is little more than a decade old, Gordon & Wolf, Chtd. is listed in the U.S.News and World Reports listing of Best Law Firms in America as a Tier 1 Metropolitan firm in Mass Torts/Class Actions – Plaintiffs. Mr. Gordon is also individually recognized in Best Lawyers in America for his achievements in the class action arena, and is AV® Preeminent™ Peer Review RatedSM by Martindale-Hubbell®, the highest possible rating.
Education
- University of Maryland School of Law, J.D., 1989. Associate Editor of the Maryland Law Review.
- The Johns Hopkins University, B.A., 1985
Court Admissions
- U.S. Supreme Court
- U.S. Court of Appeals, 3rd, 4th, 6th, 9th and 11th Circuits
- U.S. District Court, District of Maryland, Northern District of Ohio
- U.S. Court of Federal Claims
Bar Admissions
- Maryland, 1989
Martin E. Wolf, Principal
Martin Wolf may not be a household name, but you would know him if you lived near the naval air station in Virginia Beach. Mr. Wolf successfully represented the owners of more than 2,000 residential properties near Naval Air Station Oceana whose lives became unbearable when the Navy transferred 156 advanced fighter jets (nearly the entire Atlantic Fleet) to NAS Oceana in 1999. In 2000, Mr. Wolf began to develop a case against the United States for “taking” an avigation easement (flights in airspace) over their properties without paying just compensation as required by the Constitution. Although there had been successful inverse condemnation cases for avigation easements in the past, this was one of, if not the, largest of its kind. Ultimately, after 6 years, the case settled on the eve of trial for more than $34 million.
In more than 20 years experience as a trial lawyer, Mr. Wolf has represented both plaintiffs and defendants in a variety of cases: inverse condemnation, marine insurance coverage, wrongful repossession of vehicles, estate disputes, electric and gas utility administrative hearings, just to name a few. Most often, however, he has represented consumers and others who feel powerless against big government and big business. He has tried cases to multi-million dollar verdicts, and has settled class actions on behalf of thousands of plaintiffs for many millions of dollars.
Frequently Mr. Wolf takes on big corporations, consumer finance companies, banks, insurance companies, and their high-powered lawyers. In a series of class actions, for instance, Mr. Wolf sued 5 Maryland HMOs who had collected money illegally from their members. The settlements returned more than $8 million to the HMO members, for which Mr. Wolf and his co-counsel were named 2009 Trial Lawyers of the Year by the Maryland Association for Justice. He also represented borrowers whose cars were repossessed illegally by their finance companies. The settlements in 7 cases provided relief of more than $70 million.
This work on behalf of consumers has won acknowledgement and awards. In 2010, his firm was named National Consumer Attorneys of the Year by the National Association of Consumer Advocates. The firm is also listed in U.S. News and World Reports listing of Best Law Firms as a Tier 1 Metropolitan firm in Mass Torts/Class Actions – Plaintiffs. Individually, Mr. Wolf is listed in Best Lawyers in America, Maryland SuperLawyers, Who’s Who in American Law, and is rated by his peers in Martindale-Hubbell as AV Preeminent, the highest possible rating. In 2011, Best Lawyers selected Mr. Wolf as its Lawyer of the Year in Mass Torts/Class Actions-Plaintiffs for Baltimore, an honor given to one lawyer each year based on consistently high peer review ratings.
Education
- University of Maryland School of Law, J.D., with honors, 1991, Myerowitz Moot Court Award
- The Johns Hopkins University, B.A., 1980
Court Admissions
- U.S. Supreme Court
- U.S. Court of Appeals, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 6th, 11th and Federal Circuits
- U.S. District Court, District of Maryland
- U.S. District Court, Northern District of Ohio
- U.S. Court of Federal Claims
Bar Admissions
- Maryland
Memberships
- Member, Public Justice, Inc.
- Member, National Association of Consumer Advocates
- Member, Maryland State Bar Association
Benjamin Carney, Principal
Benjamin Carney is a Principal of Gordon & Wolf. He received his B.A. from the Johns Hopkins University in 1999, and his J.D. from the University of Maryland in 2004. Before law school, he worked writing and assisting production for PBS' NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.
Mr. Carney successfully litigated consumer protection claims through trial and appeal while still in law school, as a student attorney, and won the Ward & Kershaw Clinical Law Advocacy Prize in 2003. He was one of the first attorneys in Maryland to challenge "foreclosure rescue scams," and obtained significant relief for a number of Marylanders harmed by foreclosure scammers even before the Maryland Legislature passed a law specifically addressing the practice. Less than two years out of law school, he initiated a series of cases successfully challenging faulty vehicle repossession notices to Maryland consumers, which have so far resulted in more than $50 million of relief to persons whose vehicles were repossessed.
Admitted to practice law in Maryland in 2004, Mr. Carney is also admitted to the bars of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, and the U.S. Supreme Court. Mr. Carney has served as Class Counsel on more than a dozen class action cases.
Mr. Carney is a member of the American Association for Justice, the Maryland Association for Justice, the National Association of Consumer Advocates, the Maryland Bar Association, and the American Bar Association. He serves as the Secretary of the Board of Directors of the Public Justice Center, Inc., and has been named a Fellow of the Maryland Bar Foundation. He is listed as a SuperLawyers Rising Star.
Thomas McCray-Worrall
Thomas McCray-Worrall graduated magna cum laude from the University of Maryland School of Law in 2010. Thomas is a member of the bar of Maryland and the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland. He received his M.A. in English from Johns Hopkins in 2003. Thomas studied art history and English literature at Emmanuel College, Cambridge University, where he received his M.Phil. in Renaissance literature in 2000. He graduated summa cum laude from Williams College with a B.A. in English.
While in law school, Thomas served as an Articles Editor of the Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender and Class. Thomas also participated in an international human rights clinic in Namibia, doing field work and legal research on projects concerning the human right to water, litigation involving HIV-positive women who had been sterilized without consent, and economic development of community-based artisan programs.
