Personal Injury; Products Liability; Commercial Litigation; Medical Malpractice; Franchise Law; Appellate Practice.



The Firm was founded by Manuel A. Guzmán. Until 1997, Mr. Guzmán was a senior partner at McConnell Valdés, where for many years he was the chair of the product liability and trial practice group. While at McConnell Valdés, Mr. Guzmán was lead attorney in charge of and successfully defended products liability claims involving, among many things, toxic substances, consumer and pharmaceutical products, medical devices, chemicals, collapse of a tower structure, materials and products which allegedly caused fires, sudden acceleration of motor vehicles, defective deployment and non-deployment of motor vehicle airbags and the acquiring of blood transfusion associated with AIDS. Several of these are leading cases in their respective fields. On September 3, 1997, Mr. Guzmán founded Manuel A. Guzmán Law Offices, now Guzmán & Steffens. Now representing the clients that Mr. Guzmán had been representing for twenty-six years, the Firm litigates, among other fields, products liability claims in all Puerto Rico trial and appellate courts including the Puerto Rico Federal District Court and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. In such endeavors, representative clients for the Firm are Philip Morris Co., BMW, A.G., TJAC, Inc., The Chamberlain Group, Inc., Volvo Cars Corporation, Ford Motor Company, Caterpillar, Inc., Mazda North America, DePuy, Inc., Pep Boys, NorthWest Airlines, Zap Enterprises, Inc., Toyota Motor Company, De Zurik, division of SPX Corporation; Keystone Scent Corporation, Tokyo Marine Insurance Company, C & D Technologies, Inc., Mitsubishi Motors Corporation and many others. In addition to extensive experience in the defense of such suits, the members of the firm possess a fully bilingual capability indispensable to the effective representation of clients in Puerto Rico where proceedings before the Commonwealth courts must be in Spanish and those before the Federal District Court in English. Furthermore, all of our attorneys, law clerks and paralegals have obtained one or more degrees from the United States' most prestigious educational institutions.