Product Liability

We serve clients as trial, national coordinating, regional and local counsel in litigation in state and federal courts as well as in arbitrations. We assist clients behind the scenes by consulting on:

• Product safety and loss prevention issues, including the Consumer Product Safety Act reporting and other regulatory compliance
• Contract disclaimers and warranties
• Insurance coverage
• Coordination of mass tort claims
• Advertising and product literature
• Product warnings and instructions
• Employee training
• Recall scope, literature and communications

OUR EXPERIENCE

Our depth of experience puts us in a unique position to address our clients' business objectives. We have obtained an authentic depth of product knowledge in:

• Pharmaceutical and Medical Devices. Our clients benefit from decades of experience successfully defending clients in the pharmaceutical and medical device industries. They call on us to serve as national, regional or statewide counsel in simple and coordinated proceedings alike. We have defended an array of products, including over-the-counter and prescription drugs, and cardiac, radiological, and orthopedic devices.
• Residential and Industrial Heating and Process Controls. In matters ranging from residential fires to industrial explosions, we respond to the sites of catastrophic losses with tailored teams of experts, including in-house and outside engineers and fire investigators. We routinely challenge speculative and unreliable expert opinion testimony under Daubert and Frye, and have successfully barred the proffered testimony resulting in case dismissal.
• Propane and Natural Gas. We have years of cumulative experience defending pipeline companies, retailers and wholesalers in the transportation, distribution and sale of propane and natural gas. Our attorneys frequently defend complex and high exposure cases involving multiple defendants, multiple deaths and disabling and disfiguring injuries.
• Regulated Industries and Hazardous Materials. We have defended and resolved multiple wrongful death and personal injury claims arising out of a 2009 catastrophic anhydrous ammonia release that occurred at a client’s distribution facility. In a landmark ruling with potential industry-wide implications, we obtained summary judgment on the grounds that plaintiffs’ state law claims were preempted by the federal Hazardous Materials Transportation Act.
• Aviation. We have defended manufacturers of aircraft, airframe and aviation components at trial and during FAA regulatory actions arising from product failures, poor maintenance, STC and PMA compliance, FAA-approved repair stations and aircrew negligence.
• Transportation and Industrial Equipment. Our lawyers have solid experience defending manufacturers of farm and construction equipment, over-the-road trucks, concrete cutting equipment and welding rods and wires. These are highly sophisticated products that require us to work directly with your engineers and designers in defending these products during litigation.
• Consumer Goods. Many of our clients manufacture home appliances, sporting goods, garments, camping equipment, water heaters, telecommunications equipment and automobile tires. We have defended these products in multiple states and are well-versed in the consistency required in these cases and the product knowledge necessary to defend the company at trial.
• Alarm Components, Security Equipment and Monitoring. We assist clients in the alarm and security industry, defending claims of product malfunction. We also help companies draft appropriate disclaimers and warranties to minimize risk. We work with the foremost experts in the industry, utilizing cutting-edge techniques and technologies to properly identify equipment and evaluate its performance.

Our lawyers actively defend mass tort filings in states throughout the country and have years of experience in multidistrict litigation, and understand the dynamic of creating a manageable, no-surprises defense in large and difficult cases.

We also help create safety programs that implement all critical protocols into product manufacturing. From initial design through retail sale, we have prepared warnings, instructions, packaging, testing protocols, document retention plans, claims procedures and risk management guidelines to create safer products on the market and highly defensible products at trial.

As trial attorneys, we routinely analyze and succinctly summarize for courts and juries the multiple layers of complex and sometimes contradictory federal, state and local regulations and industry standards that govern our clients’ facilities, products, practices and procedures. We work with experts to understand and explain the regulatory environment in which our clients do business and use that knowledge to minimize our clients’ potential liability.

OF NOTE

Recent recognitions of the firm's Product Liability practice include:

• Tier 1 national ranking in Product Liability Litigation-Defendants in the 2013 U.S. News – Best Lawyers "Best Law Firms" survey
• Tier 1 Minneapolis ranking in Product Liability Litigation-Defendants in the 2013 U.S. News – Best Lawyers "Best Law Firms" survey
• Named a “2013 Go-To Law Firm" for tort litigation by ALM’s survey of In-House Law Departments at the Top 500 Companies
• Identified by corporate counsel as one of the best law firms at handling eDiscovery, according to the 2013 BTI Consulting survey “Benchmarking Corporate Counsel Management Strategies 2013”

Our attorneys are active in the industry and bar associations that serve our clients’ interests, such as:

• DRI—The Voice of the Defense Bar
  • Product Liability Committee
  • Drug and Medical Device Committee
  • Trial Techniques Committee
  • Women in the Law Committee
  • Juvenile and Children's Products Committee
• American Bar Association
  • Mass Torts Litigation Committee
  • Product Liability Committee
• Propane Gas Defense Association
• Food and Drug Section of the Minnesota State Bar Association