Products Liability

OUR SERVICES

Our products liability lawyers have an established reputation for expertise in the use of scientific evidence, extensive trial and appellate experience, and first-rate litigation skills to defend and protect the interests of our clients successfully. We are experienced in all levels of mass tort and class action litigation and regularly serve as National Counsel, Regional Counsel and Local Counsel. We are able and willing to try jury cases of any size, magnitude or complexity and have tried hundreds of tort cases involving products and professional liability to juries. In addition, we have achieved Daubert victories throughout the country, including recent judgments in an MDL and state courts in Delaware and New Jersey involving the drug Seroquel that resulted in the exclusion of Plaintiffs’ specific-causation experts and summary judgment for our client.

In addition to handling active litigation, Alston & Bird’s products liability group excels in crisis management and has guided clients through national product recalls, consumer complaints, mass torts and regulatory actions. We also assist our clients in due diligence investigations and provide advice about insurance, warnings, product testing issues and media relations.
Our representation has involved a wide range of product and toxic exposure claims:

• Pharmaceutical and Medical Devices: Seroquel, methadone, pamidronate, blood products, breast implants, IUDs, hemodialysis machines, PPA medications, feminine products, “Fen-Phen” and other diet drugs, natural rubber latex, pedicle screws, orthopedic implants and vaccines.
• Toxic Tort Litigation: chlorine, chlorine dioxide and other chemicals used widely in paper manufacturing; PCBs; benzene, MTBE and other petroleum products; Proposition 65; diesel fuel; secondhand smoke; pesticides; asbestos; lead; uranium; manganese; isocyanates; herbicides, pesticides, fungicides and other agricultural chemicals; and airborne toxins, including mold and anthrax, in industrial, occupational and residential settings.
• Equipment and Consumer Product Personal Injury: home appliances, automobile airbags, trailers, automobile tires, artificial sweeteners, cellular telephones, boat motors, farm machinery, toys, food products, alcoholic beverages and playground equipment.
• Consumer Product Regulatory, Testing and Recalls: Toys, juvenile and children’s products, child care articles, camping and sporting goods, skateboards, bicycle parts, youth and adult apparel, electric blankets, electronics, batteries, modems, automotive parts and supplies, tools, home furnishings and decorative accessories, furniture and rugs, jewelry accessories, healthcare products, disposable consumer paper products and building supplies.

WHY ALSTON & BIRD?

Many of Alston & Bird’s lawyers have both technical training and litigation expertise in a variety of scientific fields, including biotechnology, engineering, epidemiology, pharmacology and microbiology. We regularly draw upon Alston & Bird’s intellectual property practice in biotechnology and our firm’s 10 Ph.D.s. In addition, our staff of nurse legal assistants makes our work evaluating medical records both efficient and cost-effective.

Our business requires that we maintain professional relationships with a host of experts, consultants and administrators at major universities, medical facilities, research centers and regulatory agencies. We also maintain extensive databases of expert witnesses, scientific literature and Daubert decisions in the defense of products liability claims and toxic exposure cases. We have enormous depth of resources and a willingness to solve our clients’ problems through technology, skill, expertise and simple hard work.