Founding Member, Flaherty Sensabaugh Bonasso PLLC
Photo by John Sibold.
By Arianna Whitehair
Raised as one of four children in a hardworking family on Wheeling Island in Wheeling, WV, Thomas Flaherty always knew he wanted to attend college and give back to his community, just as he saw his parents do for others growing up.
“My father was a master machinist working in the steel mills and foundries of the upper Ohio Valley, and my mother was a homemaker,” he says. “Both were children of the Great Depression, and although they valued education, neither finished high school. Instead, they worked in blue-collar jobs to help support their parents and siblings. I learned my blue-collar work ethic from my father and a sense of human decency and compassion instilled by both my parents.”
Having received his bachelor’s degree in business administration from West Virginia University (WVU) in 1971, Flaherty went on to attend WVU College of Law and graduated with his Juris Doctor in 1974.
“The Vietnam War was still raging, and admission to law school was very competitive in 1971,” he says. “There were over 900 applicants for 100 spots in the incoming class. My class was the last to graduate from the College of Law on the main downtown campus, which is now Colson Hall. Men were expected to wear a coat and tie to class. We had classes six days a week during the first year. There were only five women in my law school class. The class of 1974 produced three West Virginia Supreme Court justices, no less than five circuit judges, the president of a major university and the CEO of a Fortune 100 company.”
Right after graduating, Flaherty went to work for Kay Casto & Chaney PLLC in Charleston. During his time there, Flaherty gained crucial work experience and was given the opportunity to work alongside one of the top trial lawyers in the state, John Haight.
“He was a great mentor to me,” Flaherty says. “I learned a great deal from John about trial work, and it turned out I was pretty good at it. He gave me a gift I can never repay.”
Haight wasn’t Flaherty’s only mentor.
“My first job in the field of law was working as a law student for future Supreme Court Justice Larry Starcher at the North Central West Virginia Legal Aid Society. Like John Haight, Larry was a wonderful mentor to me and a lifelong friend until his death late last year,” he says.
In 1991, Flaherty, Don Sensabaugh and Mike Bonasso came together to form Flaherty Sensabaugh Bonasso PLLC, which has become one of the top firms in the state and serves the needs of local, national and international clients.
“Our firm grew to become the largest litigation firm in West Virginia,” he says. “We now have offices in Charleston, Clarksburg, Morgantown, Wheeling and Lexington, KY.”
With the ultimate goal of making the situations of its clients easier, Flaherty Sensabaugh Bonasso prides itself on carefully listening to each client’s needs and providing quality, effective service based on smart strategy and decisive action.
Some of the services offered by the firm include employment law, insurance coverage and defense, medical malpractice defense, construction law and consumer litigation and dispute resolution.
Throughout his extensive career, Flaherty has represented three separate West Virginia governors and three West Virginia Supreme Court justices, all in separate litigation. Despite his professional achievements, he says he learned early on not to equate money with success.
“I’ve encountered many successful moneymakers who are miserable as human beings,” he says. “What counts most about success is how a person achieves it.”
Some of his many achievements include Outstanding Service awards from the West Virginia State Bar and Defense Trial Counsel of West Virginia and the Distinguished West Virginian Award. Flaherty has also been listed as one of the Best Lawyers in America ranking since 1995 and ranked as the No. 1 lawyer in the state of West Virginia by Lawyers.com for 10 consecutive years. In addition, he has been listed among West Virginia’s Super Lawyers since 2007, is a permanent member of the Fourth Circuit Judicial Conference, earned an AV rating by Martindale-Hubbell and is a fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers and the International Academy of Trial Lawyers.
Dedicated to supporting the legal community and his beloved home state, Flaherty has served on the WVU Board of Governors and as its chair, the visiting committee of WVU College of Law, as an officer in the West Virginia Bar Association, president of the Kanawha County Bar Association and the West Virginia State Bar and co-chair of the Campaign for Legal Aid, where he helped raise more than $1 million. He is also a founding member and original officer of the Defense Trial Counsel of West Virginia.
“Legal Aid and WVU are major causes to my wife and me,” he says. “Legal Aid helped shape my legal career and WVU because it transformed my life.”
While having traveled to many different places and countries throughout the world, Flaherty says there is no place quite like home.
“My wife and I live in an 11th-floor condominium in downtown Charleston as our main residence but also split time at houses in Longboat Key, FL, and Canaan Valley, WV,” he says. “We are natives of West Virginia. We were both born and raised in Wheeling and received our undergraduate degrees from WVU in Morgantown. I attended law school there before coming to Charleston, where I’ve practiced law for more than 49 years. West Virginia has a long umbilical cord. I’ve visited Europe, South America, the Middle East and 47 of the 50 states, but West Virginia will always be my home. The state’s natural beauty and hard-working yet caring, giving and thoughtful people are a magnet to me. West Virginia is a wonderful place to live, work and play.”
