Legal Series: Product Liability for 2014 and Beyond

William ("Skip") O. Martin, Jr. is a Senior Partner with the law firm of Haight Brown & Bonesteel LLP and a member of the Product Liability Practice Group.  Mr. Martin’s practice is national in scope and focuses on the litigation and trial of product liability actions.  He has written and lectured on the various aspects of warnings.  He serves as national trial counsel for several clients and has successfully defended companies’ products in over 30 states.  Representative products include all-terrain vehicles, personal watercraft, snowmobiles, conveyors, pneumatic conveyors, turbo expanders, nitrogen generators, film winders, wire winders, printing presses, construction equipment, and food processing equipment of various types, among many others.  He has lectured to engineers and adjusters in the United States, Europe and China.

Eric Rubel is co-chair of Arnold & Porter’s product liability litigation practice group. Eric served as General Counsel to the US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC). His practice focuses on product safety matters and related litigation. Eric has extensive experience in helping companies assess their compliance with CPSC regulations, developing effective recalls in the US and as part of coordinated global corrective action plans, and defending CPSC investigations for alleged late reporting and other enforcement actions. He also helps manage and coordinate the various litigation and regulatory matters that may arise out of product safety issues—including class actions, business disputes, and ongoing compliance with agency regulations. Eric writes and speaks frequently on product safety issues.

Colin Kelly is a partner in the firm’s Products Liability Practice Group. He focuses his practice in the areas of product liability, mass torts and toxic torts and he has bet-the-company crisis management experience.  Colin is currently serving as National Counsel to the nation’s largest moving equipment and storage rental company (an original and end use equipment manufacturer of trucks, trailers and towing devices).  Colin also has a history of trying difficult product liability cases in difficult places:  over the past four years, he has tried eight fatal cancer cases (four to verdict) in cities from Boston to Miami for Union Carbide Corporation.   For the past seven years, Colin has been recognized as a “Rising Star” in the area of mass torts and/or personal injury defense by Georgia Super Lawyers magazine and he was named “Toxic Torts Lawyer of the Year” in Lawyer Monthly’s Legal Awards 2013 and 2014.

Anna Aven Sumner is an attorney in Alston & Bird’s Products Liability Group, focusing her practice in the areas of mass torts, products liability, clinical trials and medical malpractice. Her trial experience includes a significant defense verdict in an obstetrical medical malpractice trial which was profiled by The National Law Journal as one of 10 “Top Defense Wins of 2005.” Her products liability practice centers on medical device and toxic tort litigation. In addition, she has experience with the early management of litigation risks and resolution of claims outside of traditional litigation. Anna is co-founder of Atlanta Lawyers for Animal Welfare (ALAW), a pro bono organization providing legal services to animal rescue groups. 

Geoffrey Drake is a Partner in King & Spalding’s Tort Litigation & Environmental Group.  Mr. Drake represents product manufacturers in nationwide high-exposure product liability, personal injury, toxic tort, and commercial litigation.  He has experience litigating all phases of individual, class action, and multidistrict cases in federal and state courts around the country.  Over the past five years, Mr. Drake has been a member of the core team in five “bellwether” pharmaceutical, product-liability trials, each of which resulted in a favorable outcome.  He also has experience advising manufacturers on a variety of issues, including liability risk and avoidance, product labeling, government regulation, and indemnification.  Mr. Drake has twice been named a Georgia “Rising Star” in product liability defense by Super Lawyers and Atlanta magazine.

Dr. Stephanie Plancich is a Vice President in NERA Economic Consulting’s New York City office.   At NERA, she has extensive experience performing economic analyses in class action litigations, including product liability, employment, and securities cases.   Her work has included analysis of issues related both to class certification as well as damages in these cases.   Working in the firm’s Mass Torts Practice, she has performed analyses of damages related to medical devices and other consumer products, in cases alleging personal injury and/or property damages.  She has prepared forecasts of asbestos and other tort liabilities, and these forecasts have been used for reserves on companies’ financial statements, for insurance purchases, and in the context of both acquisitions and bankruptcies.  Dr. Plancich received her BS in economics from the London School of Economics, University of London, and her PhD in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.