Industrials & Manufacturing

You have done everything possible to ensure that your business will thrive. Still, disputes, legal conflicts, and other obstacles can come out of nowhere to impede your profitability and damage your brand’s reputation. Alston & Bird’s Industrials & Manufacturing Team helps clients survive and stay competitive through these storms. We represent clients throughout the industrial and manufacturing space, including operations in automotive, bricks and stone, building supplies, floor coverings, household appliances, lumber, packaging, pharmaceuticals, plastics, textiles, and more as they confront the myriad disputes that can arise and derail years or decades of hard work.

Our litigation team is a multidisciplinary collection of seasoned lawyers who bring together a cross section of professional experience. As courtroom advocates, we have achieved significant successes for our clients, but less visibly, we serve as informed counselors with big-picture perspectives that can help head off disputes and conflicts before they happen. Our deep bench of legal and professional talent gives us the ability to successfully defend your company’s interests in supply contract disputes, requirements contracts, joint venture agreements and disputes, environmental and property claims that may arise from manufacturing plant operations, workplace accidents and disasters, consumer product safety claims, alleged defects in materials or products, antitrust challenges, government and internal investigations, trade secret and intellectual property matters, and more.

Our lawyers have served as lead and primary counsel in complex, high-stakes litigation, including multidistrict litigation. When your company is threatened with a high-profile legal dispute, you need a team with a comprehensive understanding of your legal situation and public relations and crisis management strategies that can see you through. Alston & Bird delivers, protecting your company’s interests in and out of court.

• Lead counsel for a foreign manufacturer in a high-profile Chinese drywall multidistrict litigation involving claims of product defects brought by more than 3,500 plaintiffs in 20 omnibus cases from various districts.
• Lead counsel for an international automotive parts manufacturing company in an ongoing antitrust investigation and in automotive parts multidistrict litigation.
• Primary counsel for a name-brand computer manufacturer in numerous litigation matters across the U.S., including cases arising from the largest technology buyout in U.S. history.
• Primary counsel for a leading textile manufacturer in numerous litigation matters, including securing a verdict worth $93 million in damages and fees against a component supplier for the sale of defective component goods used in our client’s manufacturing process. Awarded damages (affirmed on appeal) included replacement of defective goods, lost profits from the discontinuation of the affected product line, attorneys’ fees and prejudgment interest. 
• Lead counsel for a pharmaceutical company, securing a jury verdict of $106 million in damages for violation of contractual exclusivity provisions and a permanent injunction blocking future violations.
• National environmental counsel for the second-largest appliance manufacturer in the world, representing the company in environmental enforcement, litigation and compliance matters in multiple states.
• National counsel for a name-brand chemical manufacturer and its subsidiaries, handling a variety of toxic tort, asbestos and environmental litigation matters nationwide.
• Lead counsel for an industrial goods manufacturer in a theft of trade secrets case related to an industrial manufacturing process, resulting in a substantial award for our client valued at approximately $100 million.
• Primary counsel for an international name-brand beverage company, defending multiple putative class actions asserting claims under consumer protection statutes as well as defending claims under the Americans with Disabilities Act regarding the client’s product distribution machines.
• National counsel for a global producer and processor of industrial minerals in mass tort litigation involving allegations that talc contains asbestos. Coordinated a nationwide team of counsel and was responsible for all aspects of the case from discovery through trial, achieving significant results through strategic discovery, scientific evidence and trial readiness.