We are pleased to announce that Lawdragon has named three DiCello Levitt partners to its 2024 list of the 500 Leading Civil Rights and Plaintiff Employment Lawyers. Bobby DiCello, Diandra “Fu” Debrosse, and Ken Abbarno received this recognition for their dedication to and success in championing plaintiffs’ civil rights.
“Bobby, Fu, and Ken should be commended for what they’ve done, not only for our clients but for society, to shine a light on injustice so people can see it and allow justice to prevail,” said Founding Partner Mark DiCello.
Lawdragon selected these attorneys from among thousands of submissions based on a process of independent journalistic research and peer and client critique. The honorees, according to the publication, are the “lawyers you need when you’ve suffered discrimination; sexual abuse at work or school; or mistreatment by law enforcement or others in positions of trust.”
Bobby, Fu, and Ken—along with all our committed civil rights attorneys at DiCello Levitt, which was recently named The National Law Journal’s Civil Rights Law Firm of the Year—are on the front lines of efforts to uphold the rights of individuals and communities in numerous high-profile cases across the country.
Bobby DiCello, receiving this recognition from Lawdragon for the second year in a row, is one of the top trial lawyers in the United States and among the nation’s most innovative courtroom tacticians. Bobby also demonstrates a rare talent for communicating with the public, which is born of his belief that he must share his clients’ stories if there is to be meaningful and positive change in our country. As a co-chair of our Civil and Human Rights Litigation Practice Group and co-founder of the DiCello Levitt Trial Center, Bobby has obtained record verdicts in cases thought unwinnable. In 2021, Public Justice awarded Bobby its prestigious Trial Lawyer of the Year award for his work in the landmark Black v. Hicks police brutality and corruption case in the city of East Cleveland, Ohio, which resulted in one of the largest civil rights verdicts for any single person in American history and the even rarer mandamus actions by the Ohio Supreme Court ordering a city to pay the record verdict. Bobby continues to lead the fight for justice on behalf of numerous victims of police shootings, brutality, and misconduct, including James Williams, Kaia Rolle, Jayland Walker, Randal Worcester, Brandon Lee Cole, Zachary Fornash, Juan Taylor, and others.
Diandra “Fu” Debrosse, who serves as the co-chair of our Mass Tort Litigation Practice Group and our Civil and Human Rights Litigation Practice Group and as the managing partner of our Birmingham office, was recently named one of America’s Top 200 Lawyers of 2024 by Forbes. In May 2022, Fu made legal history by becoming the first Black woman ever appointed plaintiffs’ co-lead counsel in a multidistrict litigation—the massive products liability case against two of the world’s largest infant formula manufacturers, Abbott Laboratories and Mead Johnson—which she followed with another groundbreaking appointment, in the MDL against L’Oréal and other makers of harmful hair relaxer products marketed primarily to Black and Latina women. Fu also leads, alongside her partners Ken Abbarno and Amy Keller, the litigation seeking to hold social media companies and firearm and body armor manufacturers accountable for the racially motivated mass shooting in a Tops Supermarket in Buffalo, New York, on May 14, 2022.
Ken Abbarno is a highly regarded trial lawyer who serves as the managing partner of our Cleveland office, co-coordinator of the DiCello Levitt Trial Center, and the firm’s general counsel. Elected to membership in the American Board of Trial Advocates, Ken has been recognized as a top-tier trial attorney who has handled cases in multiple jurisdictions across the United States for the past three decades. His recent headline-grabbing civil rights advocacy includes his leadership alongside Fu and Amy in the Buffalo mass shooting litigation, a landmark lawsuit that has already helped create new law, as well as his work with Bobby representing the family of Jayland Walker, a 25-year-old unarmed Black man who was shot and killed by police in Akron, Ohio. Ken also successfully represented the family of Alvin Motley Jr., who was shot and killed on his way to visit family in Memphis, Tennessee, after an argument over loud music with a Kroger security guard.