In December 2021, Mark Semeraro and his partner Paul Kaplan merged their law firm with DeCotiis, FitzPatrick, Cole & Giblin, LLP. Where he leads the personal injury law group and is a member the Real Estate/Redevelopment, Litigation, Employment, and Public Entity Law Groups. Mark has almost 30 years of experience in commercial, employment, personal injury litigation, and real estate law. When Mark began his career 30 years ago, he primarily focused on personal injury law and handled literally thousands of matters. As time passed, his practice areas expanded, but he always maintained a substantial practice in personal injury. During the past several years, Mark has focused his personal injury practice on serious and complex personal injury claims and regularly obtains multi-million dollars settlements. His personal injury practice involves automobile accidents, truck accidents, construction site injuries, animal bites, and slip and falls. He also regularly represents various individuals and business entities, large scale real estate developers and individuals in various litigation matters and some of the state’s largest property owners & managers and real estate developers in litigation, land use applications and redevelopment projects. During the past 12 years, his practice has focused on substantial land use applications, redevelopment projects (where he represents both private and public sector clientele) and related litigation. He is also a local government attorney and has served as municipal attorney for Wayne Township, Cedar Grove Township and the Borough of Bloomingdale. He currently serves as borough attorney for North Caldwell, Pompton Lakes and Kenilworth, and special counsel for approximately 7 other municipalities and counties. Prior to joining the firm, he handled several noteworthy matters including a highly publicized case regarding a toxic dumpsite that was the subject of a major television network documentary. In this documentary, he was the lead defense counsel in a class-action lawsuit consisting of over 650 plaintiffs involving allegations of personal injury caused by environmental contamination and carried with it a one-billion-dollar demand. He regularly litigates several high profile lawsuits involving commercial litigation, employment litigation (including NJ Law Against Discrimination), civil rights litigation, environmental and toxic tort litigation, mass tort and class action litigation and regularly appears in all state and federal courts within New Jersey and in New York’s eastern and southern counties.
