Product Liability

Product-related claims and their resultant financial, governmental, and public relations issues present increasingly serious challenges for product manufacturers and sellers. Over the course of more than 30 years, Wildman Harrold’s Product Liability Practice has earned an excellent reputation for the national coordination, management, and trial of product liability and other complex recurring litigation in virtually every state in the country. Our lawyers have been at the forefront of defending individual clients and entire industries against new onslaughts utilizing aggregated claims through class, governmental, and third-party actions that invoke novel theories of liability such as nuisance, distributional and marketing liability, unjust enrichment, governmental cost recovery, and expansive uses of consumer protection and regulatory statutes. Our product liability attorneys have active national involvement in the defense of a wide variety of products, ranging from pharmaceuticals and medical devices to material handling equipment to alcoholic beverages and consumer products. We are the nation’s leading counsel in firearms product liability litigation, and have substantial regional and national experience in mass toxic tort matters involving asbestos, chemicals, and preservatives. Our attorneys have the capability and experience to help solve the unique, multifaceted problems of our clients in an efficient and cost-effective manner. Recent experience includes the following:

• We have represented an alcohol beverage industry trade organization since the mid-1980s. Our charge from the major members of the association has been to develop and lead defensive strategies and resources to defend lawsuits brought against its members, whether singly or in combination with other alcohol beverage manufacturers. Plaintiffs’ claims include misrepresentation based on advertisements as well as product defect and failure-to-warn claims. We have recently achieved complete dismissals of class actions alleging consumer fraud and other torts in Colorado, Michigan, Ohio, Washington, D.C., West Virginia, and Wisconsin.
• In litigation against seven former manufacturers of lead paint and pigment in which the plaintiff was seeking at least $3.75 billion to abate a claimed statewide public nuisance involving more than 250,000 buildings containing lead paint, Wildman Harrold obtained a dismissal of the conspiracy count against the seven defendants. The firm also took the lead in briefing the successful dismissal of a lead paint suit brought by a major municipality, the basis for which flowed largely from the opinion in another case in which Wildman Harrold was lead counsel.
• In the late 1990s, multiple suits across the country were brought against the firearms industry by 34 states, municipalities, and other governmental agencies, as well as organizations such as the NAACP, seeking to recover under theories of nuisance, negligent distribution, unjust enrichment, consumer fraud, and related theories. The firm has led the joint defense and has been instrumental in formulating legal and factual defenses to these emerging issues, which are now threatening other industries. We have taken the lead in multiple trial and appellate courts and have functioned as lead trial counsel in two of the first suits ever to be tried to a jury involving these novel theories, obtaining defense jury verdicts on behalf of our clients in both cases. To date, all but three of the governmental suits have been dismissed with no money paid by the defendants.
• Representation of leading pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturers for more than three decades on a national, regional, and local basis. Recent representations include: national trial counsel in diet drug and breast implant litigation; national coordinating counsel in litigation involving an anti-inflammatory medication and Illinois counsel in cardiac pacemaker and defibrillator, orthopedic, and neurological medical device litigation.