Atlanta Lawyer Is the Go-To Guy for Botched Circumcision Cases
Atlanta lawyer David J. Llewellyn says he came by his unusual practice niche quite by accident.
Llewellyn is a plaintiffs personal injury lawyer who specializes in botched circumcisions, which he says accounts for about half of his practice.
“I didn’t set out to be a circumcision lawyer,” Llewellyn told the Fulton County Daily Report in a profile published Thursday. “It just sort of happened.”
Llewellyn says he and his wife began researching the subject of circumcision in the early 1990s to make decisions about raising their own children. In 1993, he started a group, the Atlanta Circumcision Information Center, that opposes the practice. When an anti-circumcision activist who had addressed the group got a call from a lawyer wanting help in a case involving an infant who had been circumcised without his parents’ permission, she recommended Llewellyn.
That was 15 years ago. Llewellyn is now known as the “go to” guy for botched circumcision claims, according to colleagues. “He’s the expert in this field,” says East Northport, N.Y., lawyer John L. Juliano, Llewellyn’s co-counsel in one recent case which resulted in a $10.7 million default judgment on behalf of a boy who had the head of his penis severed during a botched bris. “I don’t know many other people who handle these cases.”
Llewellyn, who says he has handled such claims in more than a dozen states and Canada, says he’s not doing it just for the money. “Part of the reason I do this work—which isn’t making me a rich man—is to inform people,” he says. “That’s part of the function we perform as lawyers.”
And he’s certainly not shy about speaking his mind. In fact, he has spoken widely about his opposition to circumcision, which he contends is both harmful and unnecessary.
“The circumcision of infants is the American sickness, and unfortunately, we’re spreading it around the world because of a small group that’s pushing it,” he told the Daily Report.
Updated at 2:38 p.m. Friday, July 30, to correct a typographical error.
