Kimberly Beck is the founder and Managing Member of Beck Law Center, a Cincinnati-based plaintiffs’ law firm. With nearly 20 years of litigation experience, she represents individuals in products liability, serious personal injury, and civil cases arising from domestic violence, sexual assault, and other intentional violence. Kimberly spent 13 years defending corporations at major law firms before changing sides to represent plaintiffs. Today, she uses that experience to anticipate defense strategies and build strong cases for injured individuals. Her products liability practice is national and includes defective consumer, household, and children’s products, medical devices, and other unsafe products. She has represented clients from more than 40 states. Kimberly is licensed in Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, and West Virginia, where she also handles serious injury cases. She is committed to providing experienced, compassionate, and determined advocacy for people facing powerful defendants.

Born in the tiny coal-mining community of Williamson and raised in Parkersburg, West Virginia, by blue-collar working-class parents who placed a premium on hard work, honesty, and personal integrity, Bernie Layne of Mani Ellis & Layne, PLLC learned from an early age that his path to success would have to be paved with over achievement. While both of his parents grew up in abject poverty that can only be understood or imagined by those who have experienced day-to-day life in ‘coal camp’ housing in southern West Virginia, they became acutely aware of the value and necessity of education and sweat equity as a means of rising above their circumstance. It is from this culture and environment that Bernie’s parents instilled in him, and his two sisters, to never forget where they have come from and to always use their God-given talents and abilities to help people around them who are disadvantaged, hurting, disabled, destitute, or who are being abused by those in a more powerful position than themselves in society. Growing up in Parkersburg, just across the river from Marietta and Belpre, Ohio, he gained a deep, abiding respect for the hardworking people on both sides of the border. Rising from the social position of an ‘underdog,’ it isn’t hard to understand how Bernie has come to embrace these roots by becoming a highly successful legal advocate and defender of the rights of injured working-class West Virginians and Ohioans. A Strong Competitive Spirit As you can imagine, it takes tremendous family support and lots of competitive spirit to become one of only a few college graduates in his family and to become the first lawyer in his immediate or extended family. That love for competition was introduced to him as a child, by his father, an accomplished sportswriter at the Williamson Daily News. Bernie developed a love for the game of basketball and baseball and eventually earned a baseball scholarship to attend the University of Charleston in Charleston, West Virginia. As a college student-athlete, Bernie was introduced to the importance of academic and athletic discipline, teamwork, handling success and overcoming failure. As his dream of playing professional baseball faded, his commitment to personal development and higher education strengthened. Before leaving UC, Bernie was named the Ivor F. Boiarsky Award Winner, which annually recognizes the top Political Science Student in the graduating class, won a statewide award for his senior thesis, in the area of Public Law Policy, on the pitfalls and environmental evils associated with an inadequate and corrupt strip mine permitting system in West Virginia, was voted by his peers as the Student Body President and was chosen by the administration to deliver the commencement address on behalf of his graduating class, while sharing the stage with the late Senator Robert C. Byrd. Inspired to help the disadvantaged Using his undergraduate success as a springboard, Bernie went on to attend graduate school at The Ohio University, where he received a Master of Arts Degree in Sociology. After graduate school, Bernie returned to Appalachia where he worked with elderly and disabled individuals through the Title 19 Medicaid Waiver Program in Southern West Virginia. The year spent working with catastrophically injured people through Title 19 firmed his resolve and commitment to make a difference in the lives of the hardworking citizens of this state. This experience made Bernie aware of the obstacles that face disabled and poverty-stricken individuals and the myriad of statutory and legal hurdles they face, while unable to afford adequate legal assistance to address their needs. Bernie’s disappointment in the legal system and its treatment of handicapped, disabled, and elderly individuals led him to attend law school at The University of Dayton School of Law where he graduated with his Juris Doctor in the Spring of 1999. After finishing law school, Bernie remained in Dayton as a judicial extern for The Honorable Barbara Gorman, the first female judge of the Montgomery County Court of Common Pleas. In the years following his law school graduation, Bernie has remained committed to preserving the rights of injured and disadvantaged citizens of our state and has limited his practice to cases which involve people who have been injured due to the negligence of another person, corporation or governmental body. Throughout his career, he has successfully taken on big corporate asbestos producers who exposed plant workers and pipefitters to deadly and cancer-causing asbestos fibers. He has successfully confronted coal mining companies that deliberately injured workers through a neglect of OSHA regulations and state laws designed to protect this state’s workers. Further, Bernie has successfully resolved wrongful death cases involving children, medical malpractice and poorly designed products by large corporate interests who chose to place profits as a priority over the safety of our citizens. In 2021, Mani, Ellis & Layne, PLLC expanded to a new office in Columbus, OH. For Bernie, who earned both of his graduate degrees in Ohio and has many close family members in Columbus and the surrounding towns, this was a homecoming of sorts, an opportunity to advocate for hardworking people throughout both Ohio and West Virginia. Recognized by his peers Bernie’s success and achievement have been greatly rewarded as he and his partners have built an accomplished law firm at Mani Ellis & Layne, PLLC. His professional attributes and success have also been noticed by his trial lawyer peers. In 2005, he was given the Distinguished Service Award by the West Virginia Association for Justice (WVAJ), which is a group that represents the interests of the injured and disabled in West Virginia. Attorney Layne has been a member of WVAJ and the American Association for Justice for more than a decade. He is past president of WVAJ, serving from June 2013 to June 2014. He has also served on the WVAJ Executive Committee (nine years), the WVAJ Board of Governors and as a member of the LAWPAC organization. He was recently invited to join the prestigious, Southern Trial Lawyers organization and has been apponted to The Charleston Coliseum & Convention Center where he serves on its Executive and Building & Grounds Committees. Additionally, he served a two-year stint as a member of the West Virginia Bar Association’s Judicial Campaign Advertising Committee, which sought to regulate unfair, unethical and untruthful advertising during judicial campaign election cycles. In 2013, he was appointed to the University of Charleston Board of Trustees and served on the Executive and Outreach Committees within that board. He is now serving his twelfth year on the board. In 2014, he was named Alumnus of the Year at the University of Charleston. In 2017, he was appointed chairman of the Welch Challenge Campaign, an $8 million fund-raising initiative at the school. Also in 2013, Mr. Layne received an AV rating from Martindale-Hubbell, which is the highest rating attorneys can achieve from that organization. Only 2% of all practitioners nationwide earn that rating. In 2018, Bernie was selected to the West Virginia Super Lawyers list by his peers. Bernie has obtained several significant verdicts and settlements and has been granted membership in the Million Dollar Advocates Forum and the Multi-Million Dollar Advocates Forum. On a community level, Bernie recently completed a seven-year term on the Putnam County Career and Technical Center’s Healthcare Advisory Board, on which he worked with other community leaders to design, implement and guide the LPN Nursing Program at the school. His efforts in this area are consistent with his desire to work toward broad based community and rural health care initiatives which support healthcare for the underprivileged throughout our state’s communities.

Thomas Schaffer first worked at age twelve for his father’s farm and grain elevator. Coming from a large family, he saw how working families can struggle to make ends meet early on. At a young age, he learned the value of hard work, dedication, and commitment to family. Attorney Thomas Schaffer was admitted to the Ohio Bar in 1990. Thomas graduated from Bowling Green State University in 1984 with a Bachelor’s degree in Education and Economics, from Bowling Green State University in 1986 with a Master’s degree in Economics, and from the University of Toledo College of Law in 1990 with his J.D. degree. Tom has over thirty years of experience representing injured and disabled people as an attorney in Northwest Ohio. After 27 years in a large, local law firm, he boldly decided to form Schaffer & Associates with his colleagues, attorney Laura Wilson and attorney Marilyn Levine. The mission of Schaffer & Associates is to provide dedicated and aggressive representation to people who are injured and disabled. Tom has represented injured workers in thousands of hearings before the Industrial Commission of Ohio. He is also regularly involved in litigation, having successfully taken many cases to jury trial in Lucas and neighboring counties. Tom has represented injured workers in thousands of hearings before the Industrial Commission of Ohio. He is also regularly involved in litigation, having successfully taken many cases to jury trial in Lucas and neighboring counties. During his tenure as an attorney, he has argued many cases before Ohio appellate courts and the Ohio Supreme Court. He has frequently lectured on all aspects of injury law for fellow attorneys, injured and disabled workers, and labor organizations. Tom is passionate about giving back to the community. Today, he is a member of the Toledo Bar Association, the Lucas County Bar Association, the Ohio State Bar Association, the American Bar Association, the American Association for Justice, and the Ohio Association for Justice (formerly on the board of trustees and Workers’ Compensation Regional Representative). Additionally, Tom formerly served as a Board member and Board President of the Zepf Community Mental Health Center, a Board member and Board President of the Advocates for Basic Legal Equality, a Board member and Board President of Legal Aid of Western Ohio, and as a chair for the Justice for Clients Committee. He enjoys participating in TBA’s workers’ compensation section meetings as well as presenting at multiple seminars. With the Zepf Center, he assisted in efforts to provide behavioral health and vocational services to youth and adults with severe and persistent mental illness in Lucas County.