For many years, we have worked to craft helpful tort reform measures and ward off initiatives pushed by the plaintiffs’ bar. This work spans the country and includes efforts regarding the availability of protective orders in discovery, the use of confidential settlement agreements, punitive damages liability, class actions, and federal removal jurisdiction.

In addition to partnering with businesses like yours to affect change for companies in the industry, our product liability team keeps abreast of potentially precedent-setting cases and works to both educate concerned parties about them and advocate for outcomes that advance civil justice reform. Several of our lawyers contribute to the award-winning Drug and Device Law blog, where we provide easy-to-understand analysis and commentary on current, important pharmaceutical and medical device product liability cases.

We then often takes things a step further, playing an active role in advocating for verdicts and rulings in these key cases that would promote civil justice reform. Our lawyers have served as a resource for life sciences clients like you on civil justice reform issues, providing legal analysis and data from our various subject matter experts to support the work of businesses like yours, and we can also connect with legislative contacts whenever necessity dictates.

Finally, we actively partner with or are members of important industry organizations involved in civil justice reform, including Lawyers for Civil Justice, Civil Justice Reform Group, Product Liability Advisory Counsel, The Sedona Conference, E-Discovery Institute, EDRM, and ARMA, so we can better be in the know and advocate on your behalf.

Federal preemption ranks among the most important doctrines available to medical device and pharmaceutical manufacturers in product liability litigation, and our team has long helped lead the charge.

We have won dozens of preemption motions for companies like yours across the country - in state and federal trial and appellate courts - in cases involving express and implied preemption for PMA medical devices, implied preemption for generics and branded drugs, and express and implied preemption for OTC drugs. We are uniquely familiar with plaintiff lawyers’ preemption-avoidance tactics, and we are proud of our continual efforts to push the law forward on this important issue.  

There are numerous reasons why a risk assessment could be valuable for your company. Risk assessments create a strategic blueprint for handling existing litigation, and can be used to build a strong "good company” story and defense for any product liability or other lawsuits that may be filed in the future. Even if litigation has already commenced, assessing the risk of additional individual and/or class action lawsuits is beneficial to see whether such potential actions can be foreclosed before any further cases are filed as well as what the response should be if further lawsuits are filed.

Due diligence investigations can also mitigate future risk if conducted before litigation has started – or before the product is even introduced to the market. And product liability risk assessments are also useful tools when evaluating costs in connection to mergers and acquisitions.

Our team has particularly extensive experience handling a wide range of individual, class, and mass tort product liability litigation for a broad spectrum of women’s health products and reproductive-system injuries. This unique body of experience and scientific knowledge led to the creation of our Women’s Health Product Liability team.

Our team has defended, or is currently defending, product liability litigation involving hormone contraceptives, pelvic mesh, hormone replacement therapy, diet drugs, breast implants, and age and bone loss drugs, among others. In addition this team is exceptionally diverse, featuring numerous women trial lawyers and mass tort litigators with an unparalleled history working in this arena.