Ruxandra "Andra" Laidacker

Andra Laidacker is a partner at Kline & Specter, PC, in Philadelphia, who concentrates on representing the firm’s clients in the post-trial and appellate phases of litigation. She joined the now-60+ trial attorney firm in 2015, after several years serving as staff attorney to former Chief Justice Ronald D. Castille of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. She has briefed and argued cases in the state appellate courts of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware, as well as in several federal courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court and the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Representing clients in appellate phases of litigation, Ms. Laidacker has worked to promote the rights of individual citizens by advocating for the right to trial by jury, full and just compensation for innocent victims, and for the protection of a free and independent judiciary. Baumbach v. Lafayette College, for example, was remanded for trial, after the Superior Court recognized a college has the duty to protect the safety of its student-athletes. In Gill v. ExxonMobil., following a $725 million verdict in favor of a plaintiff who developed leukemia from exposure to benzene in gasoline, Ms. Laidacker defended the verdict on numerous grounds, including remittitur. In N.M.W. v. Langenbach, she protected the potential claim of a child victim of abuse, where the defendant asserted immunity.

From 2017 until 2023, Ms. Laidacker served on the Appellate Courts Procedural Rules Committee, a 12-member group of attorneys that advises the Pennsylvania Supreme Court on matters relating to the Pennsylvania Rules of Appellate Procedure. She is an active member of the Pennsylvania Association for Justice, having authored several amici briefs that were filed on behalf of the organization. In 2023, Ms. Laidacker received the George F. Douglas Jr. Amicus Curiae Award, an award given to a trial lawyer member in recognition of her outstanding accomplishments in brief writing or oral argument before Pennsylvania’s highest courts on behalf of the Pennsylvania Association for Justice.

Ms. Laidacker also writes frequently on issues of interest to the bar in publications of the Philadelphia Trial Lawyers’ Association and the Pennsylvania Association for Justice. She has contributed a chapter on judicial selection to the recently published The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania: Life and Law in the Commonwealth, 1684-2017 (Hare, J. ed. 2018). She moreover is an annual contributor to the Pennsylvania Civil Pre-Trial Guide, the Pennsylvania Trial Practice Guide, and Ohlbaum on Evidence, which are edited by the Hon. Daniel J. Anders.

Before practicing law, Ms. Laidacker was a producer with news organizations in New York and New Jersey. She earned her undergraduate degree from the School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University and her J.D. from Tulane University. She studied internationally at Oxford University (U.K.) and Humboldt University (Germany).