Product Liability and Toxic Tort/Environmental

PRODUCT LIABILITY AND TOXIC TORT
When it comes to product liability and toxic tort matters, we are the choice for clients who want highly-skilled lawyers willing and able to take the case to and through trial.  Our lawyers try product liability and toxic tort cases across the country for national clients, often in high profile and complex matters.  We have served as lead national counsel in major product liability litigation, including in multidistrict litigation involving medical devices and the manufacture of welding products.  We have handled almost every type of toxic tort case involving claims of personal injury and property damage, including claims arising out of oil spills, benzene, silica, PCBs and other chemical exposures, radioactive contamination and industrial explosions and fires.  We have served as lead counsel in mass torts arising out of large chemical releases, managing thousands of claims, handling all aspects of discovery and pre-trial practice and trying cases successfully to judges and juries.

ENVIRONMENTAL
We bring a depth of experience to environmental litigation and regulatory matters,  handling a wide variety of matters, including claims for natural resources damages, claims by governmental entities and landowners for property contamination from historic oil and gas operations, and claims of coastal erosion and other litigation and regulatory matters involving environmental damage to property.  We also represent insurers in coverage matters relating to large-scale environmental liabilities.  We are hired by clients in the most challenging of environmental matters.  As an example, we represented successfully a major refining company in the first-ever Oil Pollution Act civil enforcement action trial against the Department of Justice. 

Some of our most notable representations include:

• The Firm serves as national trial counsel for an orthopedic device company in two separate national litigations brought by plaintiffs who allege they received defective hip implants manufactured by the firm’s client.  The firm tried the first case in a Dallas, Texas federal multidistrict litigation related to one medical device to a defense verdict, and tried the first case in an Illinois consolidated proceedings related to a different medical device to a defense verdict.
• As national lead trial counsel for the welding industry, the firm won all 6 jury trials, on ten plaintiffs’ claims, that we handled in the nationwide product liability litigation. Juries in Cleveland, Ohio, New Orleans, Louisiana, Madison County, Illinois, and Akron, Ohio unanimously rendered complete verdicts for the defendants in those cases.  The firm continues to represent the welding industry.

• The firm has successfully represented a major oil company in cases arising out of the second largest onshore oil spill in United States history, including the first-ever Clean Water Act civil penalty enforcement action brought by the U.S. Department of Justice under the Oil Pollution Act to go to trial.