Eric S. Pasternack is a Member with Cohen, Placitella & Roth, and focuses his practice on complex, class action and multi-district litigation on behalf of governmental and corporate clients and individuals in cases involving environmental, fraud and deceptive consumer and trade practices, and insurance claims. Before joining Cohen Placitella, Mr. Pasternack served as a Deputy Attorney General for the State of New Jersey.
Since joining the firm, Mr. Pasternack has been appointed to serve as class counsel in DeSimone v. Springpoint Senior Living, Inc., MID-L-4958-13, Banks v. Allstate Fire and Casualty Insurance Company, Civ. Action No. 19-01617, and Williams v. BASF Catalysts, LLC, Civ. Action No. 11-1754. The Williams class action featured a $99.7 million settlement. Mr. Pasternack is also a member of Pennsylvania’s MTBE Special Counsel litigation team, which represents the Department of Environmental Protection and the Department of Insurance in the Commonwealth’s natural resource damages and cost recovery action against numerous oil industry companies.
During his tenure as a Deputy Attorney General, Mr. Pasternack served in the Judiciary & Prosecutors and Environmental Enforcement Sections of the Division of Law. As a Deputy Attorney General in the Environmental Enforcement Section, Mr. Pasternack litigated enforcement and cost recovery actions on behalf of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection in actions brought under the Spill Compensation and Control Act, the Site Remediation and Reform Act, the Underground Storage of Hazard Substances Act, and the Industrial Site Recovery Act. He also advised the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection in complex, multi-district litigation involving hazardous substances such as MTBE. While in the Judiciary & Prosecutors Section, Mr. Pasternack defended the Attorney General, members of the Judiciary, and prosecutors and detectives in the Division of Criminal Justice and the State’s County prosecutors’ offices.
Mr. Pasternack is a J.D./M.B.A. graduate of Rutgers Law School and Rutgers School of Business. While in law school, he served as an editor of the Rutgers Law Journal, a Governor’s Executive Fellow with the Eagleton Institute of Politics, and a Dean’s Academic Excellence Scholar. Upon graduation, the faculty of Rutgers Law School awarded him the Albert P. Blaustein Memorial Award for his note, HIPAA in the Age of Electronic Health Records, 41 Rutgers L.J. 817 (2012).
Following law school, Mr. Pasternack clerked for the Hon. Joseph L. Yannotti, P.J.A.D. of the Superior Court of New Jersey, Appellate Division.
Mr. Pasternack co-authored a chapter for the 2020 New Jersey Mass Torts & Class Actions Treatise titled, “Multidistrict Litigation in Federal Court” with the Hon. Freda L. Wolfson, U.S.D.J.
Mr. Pasternack is admitted to practice in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, the United States Supreme Court, the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, and the United States District Courts for the District of New Jersey, the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, the Middle District of Pennsylvania, the Western District of Pennsylvania, and the Southern District of New York.
In his spare time, Mr. Pasternack serves as the Co-Chair of the John S. Bradway High School Mock Trial Competition Committee of the Philadelphia Bar Association’s Young Lawyers Division.
