Strategic, Practical and Ethical Issues in Settling Mass Torts
ABA Section of Litigation
Mass Torts Litigation Committee
Wednesday, July 31, 2019
9:30-10:30 AM PT | 10:30-11:30 AM MT | 11:30 AM-12:30 PM CT | 12:30-1:30 PM ET
Program Description:
This program will cover the issues and challenges presented in settling mass torts, including balancing defendants' desire and need for finality, the ethical issues faced by counsel representing multiple plaintiffs, the right of individual plaintiffs to make fully informed, independent decisions, and the proper role of courts outside of the class action context.
Presenters Rich Oetheimer, Sarah Frederick and Greg Fox are Goodwin Partners who practice in drug and device litigation. During his almost forty years of trying and settling mass torts, Rich Oetheimer worked on the first mass tort certified as a class action, tried cases for one of the first bankruptcy mass tort trusts, and negotiated and implemented a coordinated nationwide settlement of thousands of pharmaceutical claims pending in multiple jurisdictions. Sarah Frederick serves as counsel for drug and device manufacturers in nationwide mass torts and helped obtain the Supreme Court’s ruling in PLIVA v. Mensing establishing federal preemption of state-law failure-to-warn claims against generic drug manufacturers. Greg Fox served as special bankruptcy counsel to the Plaintiffs’ Steering Committee in the General Motors Chapter 11 bankruptcy and won the ruling from the Second Circuit that notice to Ignition Switch claimants was constitutionally inadequate to bar such claims against "new GM."