South Carolina
Mary F. Schiavo
Member Attorney
Throughout her distinguished career in law and public service, Mary Schiavo has sought accountability and industry change from corporations, institutions and the government so that they may meet their obligation to protect the safety and security of the traveling public. Experienced in transportation litigation, Mary represents victims and their families suffering from negligence by the airline, automotive, commercial trucking, motorcoach and rail industries.
A leader of the firm’s aviation team, Mary has represented passengers and crew families of most major U.S. air crashes, as well as pilots and passengers on private or charter planes. She represents passengers, pilots, flight attendants and select owners and operators. Her experience with major, complex aviation litigation includes more than 50 cases on behalf of the family members of the passengers and crew of all the planes hijacked on September 11, 2001.
Additionally, Mary works with the Motley Rice securities team on complex securities litigation to obtain accountability from corporations and wrongdoers for breach of fiduciary duty. Her experience with corporate regulation and shareholder rights includes 10 years of corporate audit and governance committee matters, including implementing Sarbanes-Oxley compliance and serving on the Board of Directors for both a NYSE-listed corporation and a Canadian-based corporation.
Mary has held numerous government appointments under three U.S. Presidents, including that of Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Transportation from 1990 to 1996. Under Mary’s direction, the agency investigated air safety, crimes and disasters; secured more than 1,000 criminal convictions; and exposed billions of dollars of fraud, waste and abuse of taxpayer money. She testified before Congress multiple times on transportation safety, security, budgeting and infrastructure. In recognition of her work combating the use of bogus aircraft parts worldwide, Mary was honored with the Smithsonian Institution’s Aviation Laurel Award in 1992 and 1995 and was inducted to the Aviation Laurel Hall of Fame in 1997.
As an Assistant U.S. Attorney early in her career, Mary litigated civil cases and prosecuted federal white-collar crimes, bank and securities fraud, mail and wire fraud, drug trafficking and counterfeiting. During her appointment, she also served on the U.S. Department of Justice’s Organized Crime and Racketeering Strike Force, prosecuting high-profile criminal cases of bank and securities fraud and related mail and wire fraud, including a large investigation of a bank and securities fraud scheme that resulted in the federal takeover of banks, savings and loans throughout the Midwest.
In 1987, Mary was selected as a White House Fellow and assigned to the U.S. Attorney General, where she worked as the Special Assistant for Criminal Affairs. In this role, she reviewed high security prosecutions, prepared Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Requests, attended foreign legal summits with the Attorney General and worked on international prisoner and evidence exchanges. During this time, she also taught trial technique at the U.S. Attorney General’s Advocacy Institute and the Federal Bureau of Investigation Academy. Her work earned her an appointment as the Assistant U.S. Secretary of Labor in 1989, where she led the Office of Labor Management Standards, supervising union elections and investigations on election and financial irregularities.
A frequent on-air contributor or consultant for several networks, Mary has appeared on ABC, CNN, CBS, Fox News, NBC, BBC, the History Channel and Discovery Channel. Named by Glamour magazine as a 1997 Woman of the Year, 1987 Working Woman of the Year and a Top Ten College Student in 1975, she has also spoken about aviation safety on Oprah, 60 Minutes, Larry King Live, The O’Reilly Factor and Your World with Neil Cavuto, among others. Mary is the author of Flying Blind, Flying Safe, a New York Times bestseller, featured in Time magazine for exposing the poor safety and security practices of the airlines and the failures of the federal government to properly regulate the aviation industry. She contributed to Aviation Security Management (Volume One, 2008) and In the Wake of the Storm (2008) and was named to the 2010 and 2011 editions of The Best Lawyers in America for her work in mass tort litigation.
Mary received her pilot’s license soon after her driver’s license, and later completed private and commercial flight training at The Ohio State University. She returned to The Ohio State University as the McConnell Aviation Chair and professor from 1998-2002 and as the Enarson Professor of Public Policy from 1997-1998. She has also served as a practitioner in residence at the New York University School of Law. Mary is a member of the American Association for Justice and the American Bar Association, where she served in the House of Delegates and as the First Female Assembly Delegate from 1986-1989.