Product Liability

Hughes Hubbard's Product Liability and Mass Tort group is widely recognized by leading legal publications, jurists, clients and the products bar at large as a "go to" defense team for a company's most complex and challenging products litigation. The factors which differentiate Hughes Hubbard are several:

Our Bench Strength
With over 50 experienced product liability litigators and trial lawyers, including 10 partners who practice nearly exclusively in this area, as well as partners and litigation analysts with advanced degrees in engineering, medicine, nursing, and chemistry, our group is one of deepest and widest in the profession.  The group is co-chaired by Robb Patryk, Diane Lifton, and Jim Fitzpatrick, all trial lawyers and consummate legal strategists and each with over 20 years of experience leading the defense of these cases. Our Managing Partner, Ted Mayer, is the senior lawyer in the group and is nationally-renowned for his expertise and leadership in this arena. Ted and Robb are also the co-authors of a leading treatise for practitioners, Product Liability (Law Journal Press). The group also includes John Duffy, a highly distinguished Professor of torts and patent law at the University of Virginia School of Law, who brings his considerable legal and appellate expertise to the group’s wide range of challenging, complex matters.

Our Trial Record
The common wisdom is that big firms do not often try cases or have the stomach to do so. Not so at Hughes Hubbard. In the last four years, our product litigators have tried over 25 cases in the state and federal courts regarding products ranging from cigarettes to diet drugs. Over the course of that time as throughout the history of the group, we have obtained defense verdicts under challenging circumstances in challenging jurisdictions. Our attorneys also succeeded in having two plaintiff verdicts in tobacco cases vacated on post-trial motions, a very unusual result in that litigation. Every step we take as product litigators is with an eye toward trial and positioning our clients for victory there.

Our Industry Experience
We have broad experience across several consumer product industries, with particular expertise regarding federally-regulated industries (aviation, pharmaceutical, medical devices, prescription biologics, automotive, specialty chemicals and tobacco). That experience has given us a deep understanding of not only these types of products but also the business of designing, manufacturing and marketing them and of how to partner efficiently and effectively with in-house scientists, engineers, physicians and others.

Our History
We have been in the products arena since the inception of mass tort litigation in the 1970’s and count among our many representations the biggest and most widely-publicized product litigations in history, including those related to the Ford Pinto, the San Juan Dupont Plaza hotel fire, the Kansas City Skywalks collapse, the prescription drug DES, and the Engle smoking and health litigation in Florida, among many others.

These factors have persuaded numerous companies to retain us as lead or coordinating counsel for their most complex product liability and mass tort litigations. We provide below a list of several of our more recent engagements that reflect the width and depth of our products experience.