Trial lawyers rarely receive credit for their role in creating a safer America, yet their impact on product quality and consumer protection stretches across generations. Few understand this reality better than David Oddo, whose legal career spans over three decades fighting for injured clients while simultaneously shaping safety standards that protect countless others.
“Cars, pharmaceuticals, and products we buy everyday are safer because of trial lawyers. You’re wearing seat belts because of trial lawyers. The car you’re driving is safer. Power saws are fitted with safety guards. Most things from your car, to household appliances, to hospital care are safer now because of trial lawyers,” Oddo notes, referencing how litigation transformed everyday products most Americans take for granted.
Consumer advocacy through civil litigation represents a powerful check against corporate negligence—a system where accountability forces industry-wide improvements that regulations alone might never achieve. Legal actions against defective products don’t merely compensate victims; they fundamentally alter how companies approach safety engineering, risk assessment, quality control, and consumer transparency.
Deadly Design Flaws Eliminated Through Litigation
Remember the notorious Ford Pinto? David Oddo certainly does. “In the 1970’s, Ford manufactured a car called the Pinto… when it would get tapped in the rear in a fender bender, the car would explode due to a faulty fuel tank design,” he recalls. During his youth, the vehicle became so infamous that references to “exploding like a Pinto” entered everyday language.
What many forget is how litigation, not government regulation, ultimately forced car manufacturers to address lethal design flaws. Court cases revealed that Ford engineers knew about the Pinto’s fatal vulnerability yet calculated that paying settlements would cost less than fixing the design. Only after substantial legal verdicts did automotive safety transform from an afterthought into an industry priority.
Similar patterns emerged across countless consumer goods. Children once wore pajamas treated with chemicals that turned them into fire hazards. Pressure cookers regularly malfunctioned, causing disfiguring burns, until litigation made manufacturers reconsider their designs. “These lawsuits resulted in stricter, safer standards in certain industries,” Oddo explains.
Safety Improvements Beyond Individual Compensation
Negligence cases against hospitals similarly drive broader safety improvements rather than merely compensating specific victims. “Even when a hospital is sued for a breach in protocol or a misdiagnosis, or any other form of negligence,” David Oddo explains, “they should make changes… and insurance companies should demand that the hospital make safety improvements so they’re not harming their patients and exposing themselves to more lawsuits.”
Medical facilities implement new safeguards following litigation, establishing quality control processes that prevent future negligence. While immediate compensation helps injured clients, systematic changes might benefit someone “years from now” and prevent the suffering of countless unknown individuals and their families ” Oddo reflects.
Healthcare litigation particularly highlights how trial lawyers fill gaps left by regulatory systems. Consider New York State’s Lavern’s Law, which Oddo advocated for after seeing countless cancer patients denied justice because their misdiagnoses were discovered after statutes of limitation expired. Women received clear mammograms, were told to return years later, then discovered advanced cancers that had been missed initially—yet couldn’t seek accountability because too much time had passed.
“New York didn’t have a discovery statute like practically every other state,” Oddo explains. While most states addressed this injustice decades ago, it required persistent advocacy from trial lawyers to bring New York “back in line with the rest of the Country,” allowing the statute of limitations to begin upon discovery rather than when the undetected error occurred.
Accountability Principles Driving Legal Reform
David Oddo’s approach to consumer protection stems from fundamental values learned during childhood. Growing up in Westchester County, New York, he absorbed straightforward lessons about personal responsibility: “When I was a kid, there was a simple rule: you break it—you fix it. You have responsibility for your actions, responsibility for your words, responsibility for everything you do.”
Playing baseball between closely spaced houses meant occasionally breaking windows. “You throw the ball, you break the neighbor’s window, you’re paying for it,” Oddo recalls. “How? Didn’t matter. You were doing chores… cut grass, paper route… do work for the neighbor whose window you broke. Whatever it took to make them whole.”
Such principles remain relevant throughout professional sectors: “Why is that different for a doctor or a carpenter or a lawyer or anybody else?” Oddo questions. Whether someone causes harm intentionally or through negligence, responsibility means making things right.
Trial lawyers extend this accountability principle across society, from reckless drivers to negligent landowners, unsafe construction sites to substandard medical care. “You screwed up. You fix it. You have to make it right,” Oddo summarizes. “That’s what we do here at Oddo & Babat. That principle guides everything we do each and every day.”
Fighting Against Weakening Consumer Protections
Recent regulatory trends concern David Oddo deeply. “I think it’s getting worse as big companies and financial institutions have so much more leverage over you,” he warns, pointing to expanding mandatory arbitration provisions that keep consumers from accessing courts.
“These requirements function to eliminate access to the courts, preventing fair hearings for injuries or financial harms.” Oddo continues, “Access to the courts is critical for a healthy justice system. Whether you win or lose in court… you have the right to have your case heard in a court of law.”
Safety regulations face similar erosion. “I see safety regulations getting cut back, and in some cases drastically, and in some cases piece by piece,” Oddo observes, requiring constant vigilance from consumer advocates who must actively engage with legislators rather than relying on others. “You have to get in front of the people making the decisions, and that’s what I’ve been doing.”
Maintaining courts’ accessibility remains a primary mission for Oddo and organizations like the New York State Trial Lawyers Association, where he previously served as president. Without access to courts, consumer protection collapses regardless of formal regulations.
Even though he is a seasoned trial attorney, considered as one of the top trial lawyers in New York, Oddo continues to seek professional growth rather than measuring career stages. “I want to keep learning. I want to keep getting better at what I do,” he explains. He increasingly focuses on “taking cases that will have the most impact” and “making sure that every client receives full and fair compensation, while hopefully making the world a safer place.”
David Oddo’s decades representing injured clients reveal how litigation serves as both individual remedy and societal safeguard—creating accountability mechanisms that transform dangerous products into safer ones, negligent practices into improved standards, and preventable tragedies into catalysts for reform.
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