King & Spalding LLP

Combining in-depth industry expertise (including many in the team with science/medical backgrounds) with deep product liability litigation prowess in offices throughout the country, King & Spalding LLP remains a very popular choice among leading pharmaceuticals and medical device companies when faced with high-stakes litigation. Many of these matters are large-scale mass torts, where the firm regularly acts as national co-ordinating counsel, effectively mobilizing resources throughout the country, including in New York and Atlanta, to provide an all-encompassing representation throughout the litigation process. Although the firm has more than its fair share of accomplished trial lawyers within its ranks, much of the success it achieves for clients is predicated by its strong strategic sense and ability to dismiss or narrow claims at an early stage. A key part of this success is down to the firm’s ability to leverage science and medical expertise, ensuring that it is very effectively able to challenge plaintiff experts and to work with their own experts providing testimony in depositions. Andy Bayman has ‘great strategic sense’ and along with Robert Friedman  has been acting as national counsel for Boehringer Ingelheim as one of the defendants in the high-profile Zantac litigation. Notably the pair were recently part of the team that helped secure a major victory for defendants in the case with a recent very high-profile Daubert ruling which excluded all of the plaintiffs’ general causation experts and granted summary judgment for the client and co-defendants. Adam Spicer is also an integral member of the Zantac litigation team and as well as handling private litigation is also regularly involved in state Attorney General actions. Todd Davis  is a ’very skilled trial attorney’, and has over the years been instrumental to many high-profile life sciences-related trial successes, in part due to his accomplished cross-examination skills of plaintiffs’ key causation and medical expert witnesses at trial and in deposition. In New York, both Morton Dubin and Kristen Fournier have excellent reputations at handling complex life sciences-related mass torts, with Dubin, in particular, noted for his expertise in the courtroom. Geoffrey Drake chairs the pharmaceutical/medical device litigation team and is skilled at representing clients throughout the litigation continuum, including in high-stakes trials. All named practitioners are based in Atlanta unless otherwise indicated.