Torts & Product Liability
Mayer Brown appellate litigators have extensive experience handling product-liability and many other kinds of tort cases. We have successfully briefed and argued a broad spectrum of cutting-edge issues affecting a wide range of industries. We have, for example, obtained appellate victories in cases involving the preemption of state-law tort claims arising from the alleged malfunctioning of an FDA-approved medical device, the admissibility of statistical evidence that would rebut a plaintiff’s evidence of future lost wages, and the purported duty to protect employees’ spouses from second-hand asbestos exposure.
In a recent precedent-setting case, Verdugo v. Target Corp. (California), we persuaded the California Supreme Court that retailers do not owe their customers a common-law duty to maintain automatic external defibrillators. And in the seminal case Buckman Co. v. Plaintiffs Legal Committee (U.S. Supreme Court), we persuaded the Supreme Court that private tort suits predicated on purportedly false statements made to the F.D.A. are impliedly preempted by federal law.