Michael G. Dryden and Maria Elena Dryden Named Among Top 100 Injured Worker Attorneys by Workers’ Injury Law & Advocacy Group

PHILADELPHIA (October 2026) – Philadelphia labor, employment, workers’ compensation and family law firm Willig, Williams & Davidson is pleased to announce that workers’ compensation attorneys Michael G. Dryden and Maria Elena Dryden have been named among the Top 100 Injured Worker Attorneys nationally by the Workers’ Injury Law & Advocacy Group (WILG). This invitation-only program showcases exceptional lawyers dedicated to justice on behalf of injured workers.

“Workers’ compensation is a vital safety net for working people, and I am proud to be recognized alongside the leading practitioners in this area of law,” said Michael Dryden. “I will always fight to ensure our clients receive the benefits they need, when they need them.”

“No one should have to worry about how they’re going to provide for their family when faced with disease or injury,” said Maria Elena Dryden. “As the workers’ rights landscape evolves, workers continue to face new legal issues, and we are proud to help them secure the protections that keep their families going.”

Michael G. Dryden strives to ensure working people get the benefits they are entitled to when they incur work-related injuries or fall ill to a work-related disease. An expert in occupational disease, he has helped shape the law governing these claims through landmark advocacy, while securing critical benefits for workers across Pennsylvania.

In 2025, he secured a court victory for a firefighter seeking workers’ compensation benefits after he developed posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) on the job, the first time in Pennsylvania history that a firefighter has successfully claimed these benefits for a solely psychological injury. His work in the seminal case of City of Philadelphia v. WCAB (Sladek), before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, led to a favorable decision that benefits firefighters and their dependents in cancer claims. His earlier work in another case helped to raise evidentiary standards employers must meet when claiming an employee’s known occupational risk for a disease is not the cause of that employee’s illness.

Maria Elena Dryden has decades of experience writing briefs and pleadings in Pennsylvania courts and workers’ compensation proceedings. The focus of her practice is appellate and occupational disease work, including cancer and PTSD. She collaborated with Michael Dryden on the 2025 PTSD case for a firefighter as well as the Sladek decision before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. She joined Willig, Williams & Davidson’s Workers’ Compensation Department in 2008 after running her own brief-writing practice. Since then, she has helped litigate hundreds of occupational disease claims, along with cases involving orthopedic injuries, hearing loss, and psychological injuries.

WILG is the national nonprofit membership organization dedicated to representing the interests of millions of workers and their families who suffer the consequences of workplace injuries and illnesses. The group acts principally to assist attorneys and non-profit groups in advocating the rights of injured workers through education, communication, research, and information gathering.