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Charles J. Biddle

Charles J. Biddle served with distinction in World War I. He joined the Lafayette Escadrille in France, where he shot down eight enemy planes and rose to the rank of major. The French awarded him both the Legion of Honor and the Croix de Guerre, and he received the American Distinguished Service Cross.

He arrived at the firm in 1924, and of all lawyers who joined the firm in the 1920s, he had the greatest impact on its future. A graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Law School, he initially practiced law in the Drexel Building with his father’s firm. Following his father’s death, Biddle made an arrangement to join this firm (he was, in fact, the firm's first lateral partner) and brought with him several significant clients, including the Philadelphia Contributionship for the Insurance of Houses from Loss by Fire (founded by Benjamin Franklin) and the Philadelphia Saving Fund Society (PSFS). Biddle became a partner in 1925 and was a major force at the firm for decades. In the 1950s, he led the defense of Merck Sharp & Dohme in one of the firm’s first major price-fixing cases. At a trial in Trenton, N.J., he argued successfully for Merck’s acquittal alongside Thomas E. Dewey, the former governor and presidential candidate, who represented Eli Lilly.

In 2003, Drinker Biddle partner Wilson M. Brown III picked up the baton from a Charles Biddle case against the United States on behalf of the survivors of widows of men killed in a 1948 B-29 airplane crash in which the government invoked national security as its defense.

Charles Biddle (1890)