Meet Ashley Peinhardt
Ashley Peinhardt is a trial lawyer who heads Morgan & Morgan’s Medical Malpractice practice for the entire state of Alabama. Based in the firm’s Birmingham office, she represents patients and families whose lives have been changed by medical negligence, birth injury, and catastrophic injury.
Ashley is a courtroom lawyer in every sense. She has tried more than 40 cases to jury verdict, and she handles every phase of trial herself: jury selection, opening statement, direct and cross-examination, and closing argument. She personally takes and defends the depositions of treating physicians, retained experts, and corporate representatives that so often decide a case long before trial. Over her career, she has helped recover more than $150 million for her clients.
Her results include a $21 million verdict in Montgomery County for the family of an infant who died because of medical negligence, the largest verdict of its kind in the county’s history. She also secured a $7.5 million verdict against Brookwood Hospital in Jefferson County, including a record $2.5 million for loss of consortium, and a record $6 million verdict in Houston County against a physician who tried to blame his patient for her own death. Ashley tried her very first case alone, winning a $15 million verdict that she then defended before the Alabama Supreme Court. It was the largest damages judgment affirmed in Alabama in twenty years.
Birth trauma and obstetric negligence cases are the heart of Ashley’s practice. As a mother herself, she understands what families are carrying when they come to her, and she stays in close, direct contact with them from the first phone call through verdict and well beyond. Her peers elected her Co-Chair of the American Association for Justice’s Birth Trauma Litigation Group, where she helps lead plaintiff’s lawyers from across the country who handle these cases.
Before joining Morgan & Morgan in 2026, Ashley spent sixteen years at Hare, Wynn, Newell & Newton, LLP, where she was the first female lawyer and later the first female partner in the firm’s 135-year history. She is an adjunct professor of Trial Advocacy and Voir Dire at Cumberland School of Law and speaks nationally on jury selection, trial advocacy, birth trauma litigation, medical negligence, and life as a trial lawyer and mother.
Ashley is a member of the American Board of Trial Advocates (ABOTA) and the International Academy of Trial Lawyers (IATL), two invitation-only organizations of the country’s most accomplished trial lawyers. She serves as a Commissioner of the Alabama State Bar and has chaired the Alabama Association for Justice Women’s Caucus since 2022. She has been recognized by Best Lawyers in America and Super Lawyers, and named to the National Trial Lawyers’ Top 40 Under 40 and Top 25 Medical Malpractice Trial Lawyers.
Ashley earned her J.D. from Cumberland School of Law at Samford University, where she competed on the National Trial Team, earned a Certificate in Trial Advocacy, and won the Judge James Roberts Best Advocate Award. She received her B.S. from the University of Florida. She is licensed in Alabama and handles cases nationally.
