Mary is a member of the Life Sciences Health Industry and Commercial Litigation Groups, practicing in the areas of product liability litigation, insurance recovery, professional negligence (medical, legal, broker), and general commercial litigation. She has represented various clients, including product manufacturers, health care providers, financial institutions, and other businesses for whom she has tried cases in California and acted as national coordinating counsel for cases in other states. As a result, Mary has gained in-depth knowledge of a host of large businesses from pharmaceutical and medical device companies to banks to universities and hospitals, among others, and the types of litigation they face. She has also dealt with cases involving complex scientific and medical issues, gaining the necessary understanding and mastery of these issues.
Mary represents these entities in high profile, vigorously litigated cases in state and federal courts in California and across the country, overseeing all aspects of litigation, including written discovery, percipient and expert witness deposition practice, pre-trial motion practice, class action defense, alternative dispute resolution and trial. She has extensive experience trying cases. Mary has also advised and represented hospitals and physicians in administrative staff privilege proceedings and corollary legal cases in both federal and state courts.
Mary also has considerable experience in class action litigation in multiple areas of practice, including claims involving consumer fraud (California Business & Professions Code Section 17200 and similar statutes in other states), fraud, business torts and product defect cases.
Much of Mary's work over the past 10 years has also involved coordinated discovery in large-scale complex litigation, including the creation of data bases for document management and production and for coordinated discovery in multi-district and other consolidated multi-case litigations. She has designed, implemented and trained others in these areas and has headed up several teams of Reed Smith lawyers who have had national discovery coordinating responsibilities in multi-case litigations.
Mary has been a lecturer for The Rutter Group, Continuing Education of the Bar (CEB), and the Defense Research Institute (DRI), and has presented seminars to other lawyers on ethics, law and motion practice, discovery, and other civil litigation subjects such as Daubert motions and consumer privacy. She has acted as a mediator for the American Arbitration Association and for the local courts.