About Us
Welcome to the Gordon Legal website.
My name is Peter Gordon and this is my law firm.
I’ve been a lawyer working on class actions and toxic torts for thirty years. I worked at the Australian national law firm Slater & Gordon for nearly thirty years and I finished there as Senior Partner and Deputy Chair in August 2009.
When I left Slater & Gordon, I intended to leave the practice of law behind me. But then thalidomide came along.
I agreed on behalf of a friend to provide some pro bono legal help to Ken Youdale, a decorated World War II veteran who had been working to get a better deal for Australian and New Zealand thalidomide survivors. The story of Ken’s work (and my role in his work,) is well told in an article written in The Age newspaper in July 2010. You can read it here
As that work was being done, Ken asked me to advise a few people who were born in the period thalidomide was available and who had congenital malformations but who had been rejected as thalidomiders. For a period of nine months, I did so, on a pro bono basis. What I discovered led me to realise that the real extent of the thalidomide disaster had not been uncovered; and that I could not do justice to it on a pro bono or a part-time basis. It became clear that the opportunity to set the record straight and achieve justice would be long and expensive. And so, I set up Gordon Legal to pre-dominantly get a just result in these cases. And then I went and spoke to my friends and former partners at my old firm Slater & Gordon and they were more than happy to join forces in this important cause. I’m proud to be working on the Australian and New Zealand cases in collaboration with my old firm.
When The Age article about the work Ken and I had done and the $50,000,000 ex gratia fund became public, I received a large number of inquiries from all over the world; and apart from Australia, most inquiries came from North America and the United Kingdom. I believe thousands of thalidomide survivors have been denied for fifty years the truth about their disabilities and their due financial redress. I spent some time working out the best way to help thalidomiders in these countries.
In October 2010, in conjunction with my former firm Slater & Gordon we commenced a class action in the Victorian Supreme Court for Australian and New Zealand thalidomiders against the company which invented the substance, Chemie Grunenthal. If you are a person affected by thalidomide, you are welcome to contact us.
We have established contacts with lawyers in the United States and the United Kingdom who can help thalidomiders there. If you wish to contact us, we will arrange for you to get free, confidential and independent legal advice
If you think you may be able to help us is some other way with knowledge that may be useful to the case I encourage you to email me at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it