Williams & Connolly: Product Liability, Torts, and Medicine

Representative Product Liability, Torts and Medicine Matters

Prempro - Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) - Currently defending Wyeth as National Trial Counsel in lawsuits seeking damages allegedly caused by Prempro, a widely prescribed drug for menopausal symptoms. Williams & Connolly has coordinated every aspect of the litigation; and its lawyers, together with lawyers from other firms, have tried all of the cases to proceed to trial to date. Seven cases had been tried to verdict - five resulted in judgments for Wyeth, some of which have been affirmed on appeals handled by the firm. Appeals of the two plaintiffs' verdicts are pending.
Vioxx Litigation - Served as Co-National and Coordinating Trial Counsel for Merck in defending against and settling claims filed in federal and state courts throughout the country in connection with the drug Vioxx, which was pulled off the market in the Fall of 2004.
Baycol - Currently serving as National Coordinating Counsel for Bayer in defending the Company against thousands of individual actions and scores of class actions filed throughout the country in connection with the drug, Baycol, a cholesterol reducing statin.
In re Norplant Contraceptive - Represented Wyeth (then American Home Products, Inc.) in litigation involving Norplant, the first innovation in contraception in 25 years when it became the target of more than 50,000 lawsuits alleging defective product design and failure to warn of a constellation of common side effects. Williams & Connolly defeated class certification motions in federal and state courts in California, Illinois, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Texas and won the first set of bellwether cases on summary judgment in the federal multidistrict litigation and achieved defense victories in four trials in state courts in Texas and New York. Following those victories, Wyeth obtained settlement of the remaining cases on extremely favorable terms.
Breast Implant - Successfully represented General Electric, a bulk supplier of silicone raw materials to breast implant manufacturers, in putative class actions involving more than 12,000 individual plaintiffs. Williams & Connolly won summary judgment for GE in the federal multidistrict litigation, and GE, unlike every other defendant, paid nothing in judgments or settlements.
Childhood Vaccines - Represented Wyeth in the early stages of litigation claiming that childhood vaccines cause autism and other neurodevelopmental problems. Many of the cases sought class action status and injunctive relief in the form of medical monitoring. We helped shape and implement the legal strategy to defeat class certification and have these cases first heard in the federal Vaccine Court.
In re New Orleans Tank Car Leakage - Represented CSX Transportation, Inc. in the settlement and class action fairness hearing in a Louisiana class action involving a tank car leak of hazardous materials and resulting fire near New Orleans; the alleged class members numbered approximately 10,000.
Usrey v. Becton Dickinson & Co (American Home Products) - Represented Wyeth (formerly American Home Products, Inc.) in a putative class action brought by plaintiff healthcare workers claiming that the syringes manufactured by defendants were defective because they lacked additional safety mechanisms designed to prevent accidental needle-sticks. The appellate court reversed the trial court grant of class certification and decertified the class.
American Cyanamid Co. - Represented American Cyanamid in a putative class action brought by plaintiff farmers alleging breach of warranty and product defect claims against defendant insecticide manufacturer. The court denied plaintiffs' motion for class certification.
Estate of Quaintance v. CSX, et al. - Williams & Connolly won summary judgment motion on federal preemption grounds for CSX railroad in a wrongful death case in which the decedent died in a fire in a rail car after a passenger train crash in a bayou in Alabama.
Hall v. General Electric - Williams & Connolly won summary judgment on judicial estoppel grounds for General Electric in a fire case in which the plaintiff was badly burned in a house fire that his counsel alleged was started by a GE extension cord.
In re Chemetron Corp., Chemetron Investments, Inc. and Sunbeam Corporation - Williams & Connolly represented Sunbeam Corporation (now known as American Household, Inc.) in an administrative action brought by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission seeking to force Sunbeam to pay for the cost of replacing hundreds of thousands of allegedly defective fire sprinklers. After a year of hard-fought litigation, Williams & Connolly reached a favorable settlement for Sunbeam Corporation which involved the nationwide recall of approximately 60,000 fire sprinklers for which Sunbeam agreed to contribute a maximum of $1 million into a fund to be used to provide payments to claimants who removed and replaced their fire sprinklers.
Tractor Fire - Represented International Harvester in claims for burn injuries allegedly arising from the defective design of tractor gasoline gaps. When Williams & Connolly entered the litigation, there already had been a verdict for significant punitive damages based on alleged discovery fraud. The Firm coordinated a discovery effort that eliminated the suggestion of discovery fraud, obtained a reversal of the punitive damages verdict and prevailed in the FTC proceedings.
In re Paoli R.R. Yard PCB - Successfully defended General Electric in litigation alleging exposure to PCBs at Paoli railroad yard. Plaintiffs sought claims for personal injury, medical monitoring and property damage. Williams & Connolly developed a strategy to exclude the plaintiffs' experts and then won the trial on the medical monitoring claims. Eleven years after it began, GE won a total victory.
Operation "Baby lift" - Williams & Connolly represented more than 50 Vietnamese orphans who survived the crash of a cargo plane that was seeking to airlift them out of Vietnam in the closing days of the war. Subsequently adopted by European families, they brought suit in the United States against the airplane manufacturer and the United States, as the operator of the airplane for defective design of the cargo door. When the firm proved able to conduct the entire discovery on the expedited schedule ordered by the court and to go forward with one trial per month, the defendants settled.
Medical Devices - Served as lead counsel for United States Surgical Corporation, a leading manufacturer of wound closure products and advanced surgical devices, in a number of product liability lawsuits, including cases for wrongful death, throughout the country concerning a variety of medical devices.
Vioxx - Williams & Connolly has been co-national counsel in this products liability litigation, including trying several cases to verdict and negotiating the recently announced global settlement.