Debora A. O’Neill is a Senior Attorney in The Axelrod Firm’s Philadelphia, Pennsylvania office where she handles complex commercial litigation, employment litigation and counseling, and product liability  litigation matters on behalf of organizations (companies and governmental bodies) in state and federal courts. She has over twenty-five years of extensive litigation and trial experience in the prosecution and defense of complex commercial and tort litigation in a wide variety of cases involving multiple parties and vigorously contested expert issues.

Ms. O’Neill’s commercial litigation experience includes cases involving claims for interference with contractual relations, fraud, unfair competition, misappropriation of customers, assets, intellectual property, and trademark and copyright infringement, including claims in partnership and minority shareholder disputes and business torts. She has handled multiple requests for injunctive relief and temporary restraining orders requiring fast-paced  litigation on a compressed schedule in both state and federal court. Her commercial litigation experience spans cases involving a variety of business problems including contract and sales actions, construction and building disputes, collection of receivables matters, and Dragonetti claims.

Ms. O’Neill also brings to the firm extensive experience in both the prosecution and defense of class actions involving contracts, consumer fraud, consumer products, credit reporting, and securities.  Her employment litigation experience includes providing employment advice and counseling to both corporate clients and employees in discrimination matters, whistleblower claims, employment separation matters, and restrictive covenants involving trade secrets and non-competition agreements. She has defended class actions involving wage and hour claims under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and racial discrimination claims under Title VII. Her experience includes the litigation of class age discrimination and ERISA claims arising out of voluntary separation plans and reductions in force as well as class claims to remedy construction defects in residential developments.

Ms. O’Neill also has very substantial experience in the litigation of product liability claims in state and federal court. She has prosecuted serious and life altering injury and wrongful death cases resulting from use of household products, industrial machinery, athletic equipment, pharmaceutical drugs, dietary supplements, and over the counter products. Her litigation experience involves working with experts in several technical, medical, and financial specialties. Early in her career, Ms. O’Neill was involved with the defense of libel claims on behalf of media defendants and in the representation of reporters in Philadelphia.

Ms. O’Neill is admitted to the Bars of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania and New Jersey, the United States District Courts for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, the District of New Jersey, and the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. She has received Martindale-Hubbell’s AV Preeminent rating, the highest rating that can be given to an attorney. She obtained her J.D. from Villanova University School of Law in 1981. She attended Penn State University, where she majored in Architecture, receiving her Bachelors of Science degree in 1978. Ms. O’Neill formerly practiced with the firm of Meyerson & O’Neill in Philadelphia for over twenty years.