Paulozzi, Alkire & Condeni Personal Injury Lawyers

Focus and practice areas

Injury and wrongful death claims make up the whole of this Ohio practice. The firm handles car, truck and motorcycle crashes, pedestrian and bicycle collisions, slip and fall incidents, dog bites, medical malpractice, nursing home abuse, workplace injuries and catastrophic injuries. Product liability and premises liability claims also fall inside that work.

That mix covers most of the ways an ordinary person gets hurt by someone else's conduct. A crash on I-77, a fall in a supermarket aisle, a bite from an unrestrained dog: each one runs on different law, and the firm names all three.

Motor vehicle and motorcycle claims

Vehicle collisions are the volume driver in almost any Ohio injury practice, and this one lists them first. Motorcycle claims get their own listing, which matters in practice. Riders face a well-documented bias in how insurers and juries read fault, and injury severity in a motorcycle crash tends to run higher than in a comparable car impact.

Ohio applies modified comparative negligence to these claims. An injured person recovers only if their share of the fault stays at 50 percent or below, and any award drops by whatever percentage of fault they carry. That single rule explains why so much early work in a crash case goes into establishing exactly who did what.

Premises liability, dog bites and falls

Slip and fall claims turn on the property owner's knowledge. The injured person generally has to establish that the hazard existed, that the owner knew or should have known about it, and that nothing reasonable was done. Surveillance footage, incident reports and maintenance logs carry a lot of the argument, and those records have a habit of disappearing if nobody demands them early.

Dog bite claims in Ohio work differently. The state has a strict liability statute for dog owners, so the injured person does not have to prove the animal had bitten anyone before. That makes the fight in most of these cases about damages and about who legally counts as the keeper or harborer of the dog.

How the team is built

Ten attorneys appear on the firm's roster: Joseph G. Paulozzi, Richard C. Alkire, Joseph A. Condeni, Suzanne Stocker, Joseph H. Wantz, Todd O. Rosenberg, Amy L. Higgins, Zachary Feldman, La'Dajia Ferguson and Patrick M. Farrell. Three of those names carry through to the firm's own name. The current name follows the combination of two Ohio injury practices, Paulozzi and Condeni, announced in late 2025.

A bench of that size changes what a single office can carry. Injury litigation moves in bursts: a case sits quiet through medical treatment, then demands depositions, expert reports and motion practice in a compressed window. Firms with one or two lawyers manage that by staggering intake. Firms with ten can run several matters through the active phase at once.

Richard C. Alkire

Alkire is the one attorney with a detailed profile on the site. He has more than four decades in personal injury law and professional ethics, and he handles personal injury and wrongful death matters involving automobile accidents, medical malpractice, product liability and premises liability. He earned his Juris Doctor, cum laude, from Cleveland-Marshall College of Law.

His second line of work sets him apart on this roster. Alkire represents attorneys and judges in professional discipline proceedings before the Ohio Board of Professional Conduct. Those matters begin with a grievance to a certified grievance committee or to disciplinary counsel, move through investigation, and reach the Board for hearing before any recommendation goes to the Ohio Supreme Court, which holds the final say on sanctions.

In my opinion, that discipline practice is the most interesting detail in the firm's published material. A lawyer who spends part of his career arguing about what other lawyers owed their clients tends to develop a sharp read on the standard of care. That instinct transfers directly to medical malpractice work, where the case is built on the same question aimed at a different profession.

Where the firm works

The main office is in Independence, just south of Cleveland and a short run from the I-77 and I-480 interchange. The firm also lists offices serving Columbus, Akron, Cincinnati, Toledo, Lorain, Mantua and Fairview Park.That spread reaches four major metropolitan areas in Ohio plus several smaller communities.

Venue drives a good deal of strategy in injury litigation. A claim filed in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas draws a different jury pool and a different motion practice culture than one filed in Hamilton or Lucas County. Local presence in each of those markets gives a firm a working sense of how a specific bench handles summary judgment and how a specific pool values pain and suffering.

Ohio's statute of limitations for most personal injury claims runs two years from the date of injury. Medical malpractice claims run one year, with a discovery rule and a 180-day extension available on written notice. Wrongful death claims run two years from the date of death. Those deadlines are hard, and geography matters mostly because an office nearby makes an early consultation easier to arrange.

What the published record shows

The firm publishes its full attorney list, its practice areas and its office locations, and it maintains active pages on Facebook, LinkedIn, X and YouTube. The site does not state a founding year, and it does not carry a corporate designation like LLC or LPA in the name displayed on the home page. Only Alkire has a full biography posted.

As a reviewer, I read the publication pattern as one built around volume intake rather than individual attorney marketing. The firm gives a prospective client the practice areas, the geography and the names, and it leaves the detailed vetting to the first conversation. Firms that handle a steady stream of crash and fall claims often work this way, because the client's first question is whether the firm takes their type of case at all.

What a prospective client can verify

Every attorney named on the site can be checked independently. The Supreme Court of Ohio maintains a public attorney directory listing registration status, admission date and any disciplinary history for every lawyer licensed in the state. A search there takes a minute and covers all ten names.

Fee arrangements in personal injury work are worth raising directly at the first meeting. Contingency agreements in Ohio must be in writing, and they have to state how the fee is calculated and how case expenses are treated.Whether costs are deducted before the fee or from the client's share afterward changes the final number, and the written agreement is where that gets settled.

How these matters generally proceed

An injury claim usually opens with treatment and documentation rather than litigation. The lawyer gathers medical records, police or incident reports, wage loss evidence and photographs, then sends a demand package to the insurer once the client's condition stabilizes enough to value. Many claims resolve at that stage without a lawsuit.

When they do not, a complaint gets filed and the case enters discovery. Written interrogatories, document requests and depositions follow, and expert witnesses enter on causation and damages. Medical malpractice cases add an affidavit of merit requirement in Ohio: the complaint has to include a sworn statement from a qualified medical professional supporting the claim.

Trial dates in Ohio common pleas courts typically land a year or more after filing, and most cases settle before reaching one. Mediation and pretrial conferences often produce the resolution. A firm with ten attorneys and multiple office locations is built to keep several of these tracks running at the same time, which is the practical argument for a bench over a solo practice.

Paulozzi, Alkire & Condeni names ten attorneys, works from Independence with additional Ohio locations, and confines its practice to injury and wrongful death claims.