Drug & Device Litiga ...

Drug & Device Litigation – Trials

FORMIDABLE ADVOCATES FOR OUR CLIENTS

Butler Snow’s drug and device team includes a number of highly capable first-chair trial attorneys with experience trying cases in some of the most notoriously plaintiff-friendly jurisdictions across the country. We know how to manage large-scale litigation as national counsel while simultaneously trying and preparing working up multiple other cases for trial – ensuring that our clients receive the most efficient and effective defense possible.

While we are called upon to “parachute in” to handle trials from time to time, we serve as lead or co-lead trial counsel in many of the cases we defend as national counsel. Due to our leadership role in the overall litigation, we are well-positioned to defend each case from the beginning consistent with our client’s overall trial strategy and themes.

Our drug and device litigators have won 13 trials since 2019 – 9 in 2022 alone. See “Butler Snow’s Pharmaceutical Litigation Teams Go Undefeated With 9 Trial Wins In 2022,” January 20, 2023 Our verdicts have been profiled by The American LawyerLaw360 and CVN, among others. For example, our team’s consecutive defense verdicts in October 2022 were profiled by Law360 in “J&J Ethicon Unit Prevails In 2 Pelvic Mesh Trials,” October 13, 2022. As another example, Orlando R. Richmond, Sr. was featured for a defense verdict in the second bellwether Pradaxa® trial in Connecticut in AmLaw Litigation Daily’s “Litigators of the Week: A Compassionate—But Effective—Product Liability Defense,” May 11, 2018.

One of the keys to our success as trial lawyers is our firm’s collaborative environment – a culture based on trust, support and communication and not competition – that enables each member of our team to excel. We have several accomplished women and minority trial attorneys who regularly lead trial teams in complex, high-stakes pharmaceutical and medical device cases.

We invest significant amounts of time in mentoring and developing the next generation of star trial attorneys, and often include younger attorneys as key members of the overall trial team. This benefits both our firm and our clients because we have a deep bench of experienced litigators with boots-on-the-ground trial experience from which we can draw upon to effectively staff cases.

Our team includes experienced paralegals who routinely accompany our attorneys to trial and serve as core members of the trial team. We also rely upon the expertise of our firm’s nurse consultants and graphics specialists to present a cohesive and compelling case at trial.

Our firm is home to several Fellows of the American College of Trial Lawyers and the International Academy of Trial Lawyers, both of which are prestigious, invitation-only groups of trial lawyers with proven track records. Our team also includes the President of the Trial Lawyers of America, the President of the American Board of Trial Advocates, and faculty of the International Association of Defense Counsel’s Trial Academy and the American Board of Trial Advocates’ Masters in Trial Program. We have team members who are included in Benchmark Litigation’s 2024 Top 100 Trial Attorneys and Law360’s 2016 Trial Pros.

Our clients and peers had this to say about our trial experience:

Chambers USA

  • “The firm is fantastic at handling complex litigations in multiple jurisdictions.” Chambers USA  commentary (2024)
  • “They do a phenomenal job.” Chambers USA client commentary (2023)
  • “Butler Snow has a strong reputation for its knowledge of the life sciences sector, where it regularly acts for a number of leading entities in complex product liability claims . . . Substantial experience handling major multidistrict litigation and widely regarded as one of the leading litigation firms in the Southeast, while making significant inroads elsewhere in the country.” Chambers USA commentary (2023)
  • “It’s an exceptional law firm,” says a source. “There’s a good base of talented lawyers, an excellent reputation and the ability to practice across the country.” Chambers USA commentary (2021)
  • “Clients highlight the firm’s ‘very, very good trial lawyers,’ and note that they are ‘very collaborative with other firms.’” Chambers USA commentary (2019)
  • “The Butler Snow firm is very, very skilled at both trying jury trials, and dealing with extensive and complex discovery and legal issues.” Chambers USA commentary (2018).
  • Ranked for nationwide Product Liability & Mass Torts: The Elite (2024).

Highlights