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Products Liability

From Fortune 500 companies to entrepreneurships, Steptoe & Johnson provides clients with unparalleled experience in products liability and mass tort defense.  An impressive and enthusiastic team of trial lawyers is particularly skillful at building factual defenses for highly complex, scientific, and technical matters.  The firm provides clients with a team approach to problem solving and an aggressive focus on case management, which includes strategy development, trial preparation, expert testimony, and jury research. Steptoe & Johnson is one of the few regional defense firms with a specialty group dedicated to products liability. 

Representative Experience

  • Assisted a public service district in pursuing a major litigation regarding defective design.
  • Defended a Fortune 500 company against hundreds of product liability cases filed by construction workers who alleged that noise emitted by heavy equipment caused hearing loss.
  • Defended one of the nation’s largest heavy equipment manufacturers in a large excavator fire claim involving complex issues of fire origin and cause and electrical engineering.
  • Regional and local counsel for clients named in benzene litigation
  • National, regional and local counsel for clients named in asbestos litigation
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Active Leadership and Lobbying Efforts

  • Steptoe & Johnson includes among its members, former chairpersons of the state’s Democratic and Republican parties and provides lobbying services to its clients on a daily basis. Products Liability Group members are active in state and national defense organizations, including the West Virginia Defense Trial Counsel and Defense Research Institute.
  • Attorneys in the group are frequent lecturers at national and local seminars on products liability issues, including asbestos, silica and benzene litigation, medical devices, fire origin and cause, subrogation, and spoliation of evidence. 

Commitment to Client Services

  • Serial and mass litigation, such as silica, benzene, and asbestos, is managed vigorously through the maintenance of client documents, expert deposition, and regulation repositories, cost/benefit matrices to track settlements and compare trends, and intranet sites.
  • Technological capabilities include a number of litigation-based software programs and databases used to manage documents, discovery, and data. For large cases, the firm’s IT department is consulted to customize the right technology module to support the process, with an emphasis on controlling transactional costs.
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Areas of Concentration


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Recent Articles & Publications
Rise in UTVs May Mean Rise in Litigation,
May 28, 2010
Court Decision Could Limit Product Warranties,
April 13, 2010