Partner, Skadden, Arps, Slate
John Beisner is the leader of Skadden’s Mass Torts, Insurance and Consumer Litigation Group. He focuses on the defense of purported class actions, mass tort matters and other complex civil litigation in both federal and state courts. He also regularly handles appellate litigations and has appeared in matters before the U.S. Supreme Court. Over the past 25 years, he has defended major U.S. and international corporations in more than 600 purported class actions filed in federal courts and in 40 state courts at both the trial and appellate levels. Those class actions have involved a wide variety of subjects, including antitrust/unfair competition, consumer fraud, RICO, ERISA, employment discrimination, environmental issues, product-related matters and securities. He also has handled numerous matters before the Judicial Panel on multidistrict litigation, as well as proceedings before various federal and state administrative agencies, particularly the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
Mr. Beisner has advised on numerous high-visibility corporate crisis situations, including congressional hearings, federal agency investigations, state attorneys general inquiries and General Accounting Office reviews. Among others, he represented Merck in its Vioxx litigation. He also negotiated a settlement with state attorneys general regarding the Countrywide Finance/Bank of America mortgage lending practices investigation, resulting in a creative loan modification program intended to help more than 400,000 families maintain ownership of their homes. He was named “Litigator of the Week” by The American Lawyer for his role in this case.
Mr. Beisner is a frequent writer and lecturer on class action and complex litigation issues. In 2013 he received the Burton Award for Legal Achievement, which recognizes excellence in legal scholarship. Mr. Beisner also has been an active participant in litigation reform initiatives before Congress, state legislatures and judicial committees. He has testified numerous times on class action and claims aggregation issues before the U.S. Senate and House Judiciary Committees (particularly with respect to the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005) and before state legislative committees. For his integral role in crafting the Class Action Fairness Act, Mr. Beisner was recognized with the 2011 Research and Policy Award by The U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform.
Mr. Beisner repeatedly has been selected for inclusion, and is in the top tier, inChambers USA: America's Leading Lawyers for Business in the area of products liability, and he also is listed in The Best Lawyers in America, The Legal 500 U.S., Who’s Who Legal and Lawdragon 500 Leading Lawyers in America. Mr. Beisner was profiled in an article by The American Lawyer that named Skadden as a finalist in the products liability section of its Litigation Department of the Year contest (January 2012). He was named one of the 2013 “BTI Client Service All-Stars” by The BTI Consulting Group for providing outstanding client service. He also was named one of Law360’s MVPs of 2011 in the products liability category, which recognizes those who have raised the bar in corporate law throughout the year. Law360 also profiled Mr. Beisner in two articles that named Skadden as a “Product Liability Group Of The Year” and“Class Action Group Of The Year” for 2010.
A list of the numerous published federal and state court decisions in which Mr. Beisner has played a role is available on request.
Senior Advisor, Buford Capital
His experience includes roles as in-house counsel at a Fortune 50 company, a litigator at one of the world’s leading law firms and a law clerk at the Supreme Court of the United States.
Prior to helping launch Gerchen Keller in 2013, Mr. Lenkner was a Senior Counsel at The Boeing Company, the world’s largest aerospace firm and the leading manufacturer of commercial jetliners and defense, space and security systems. While at Boeing, he represented the company in litigation matters and advised senior executives on significant regulatory issues.
Previously, Mr. Lenkner was a litigation and appellate attorney in the New York and Washington offices of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP, where he represented clients in complex civil and criminal disputes before the Supreme Court and other tribunals.
Mr. Lenkner served as a law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy and Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. He earned his JD from the University of Kansas School of Law, where he was Editor-in-Chief of the Kansas Law Review. He graduated from Kansas State University and is the national chair of the board of directors of the university’s alumni association.
Partner, Skadden, Arps, Slate
John Beisner is the leader of Skadden’s Mass Torts, Insurance and Consumer Litigation Group. He focuses on the defense of purported class actions, mass tort matters and other complex civil litigation in both federal and state courts. He also regularly handles appellate litigations and has appeared in matters before the U.S. Supreme Court. Over the past 25 years, he has defended major U.S. and international corporations in more than 600 purported class actions filed in federal courts and in 40 state courts at both the trial and appellate levels. Those class actions have involved a wide variety of subjects, including antitrust/unfair competition, consumer fraud, RICO, ERISA, employment discrimination, environmental issues, product-related matters and securities. He also has handled numerous matters before the Judicial Panel on multidistrict litigation, as well as proceedings before various federal and state administrative agencies, particularly the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
Mr. Beisner has advised on numerous high-visibility corporate crisis situations, including congressional hearings, federal agency investigations, state attorneys general inquiries and General Accounting Office reviews. Among others, he represented Merck in its Vioxx litigation. He also negotiated a settlement with state attorneys general regarding the Countrywide Finance/Bank of America mortgage lending practices investigation, resulting in a creative loan modification program intended to help more than 400,000 families maintain ownership of their homes. He was named “Litigator of the Week” by The American Lawyer for his role in this case.
Mr. Beisner is a frequent writer and lecturer on class action and complex litigation issues. In 2013 he received the Burton Award for Legal Achievement, which recognizes excellence in legal scholarship. Mr. Beisner also has been an active participant in litigation reform initiatives before Congress, state legislatures and judicial committees. He has testified numerous times on class action and claims aggregation issues before the U.S. Senate and House Judiciary Committees (particularly with respect to the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005) and before state legislative committees. For his integral role in crafting the Class Action Fairness Act, Mr. Beisner was recognized with the 2011 Research and Policy Award by The U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform.
Mr. Beisner repeatedly has been selected for inclusion, and is in the top tier, inChambers USA: America's Leading Lawyers for Business in the area of products liability, and he also is listed in The Best Lawyers in America, The Legal 500 U.S., Who’s Who Legal and Lawdragon 500 Leading Lawyers in America. Mr. Beisner was profiled in an article by The American Lawyer that named Skadden as a finalist in the products liability section of its Litigation Department of the Year contest (January 2012). He was named one of the 2013 “BTI Client Service All-Stars” by The BTI Consulting Group for providing outstanding client service. He also was named one of Law360’s MVPs of 2011 in the products liability category, which recognizes those who have raised the bar in corporate law throughout the year. Law360 also profiled Mr. Beisner in two articles that named Skadden as a “Product Liability Group Of The Year” and“Class Action Group Of The Year” for 2010.
A list of the numerous published federal and state court decisions in which Mr. Beisner has played a role is available on request.
Assistant Attorney General, Environment and Natural Resources Division, U.S. Department of Justice
Jeffrey Bossert Clark was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on April 17, 1967. He is a graduate of Harvard University (A.B. in economics and history, 1989), the University of Delaware (M.A. in urban affairs and public policy, 1993), and the Georgetown University Law Center (J.D., 1995).
Mr. Clark began his career working for the State of Delaware’s Department of Finance, Division of Revenue as an economics analyst in the field of tax policy. During his tenure from 1989 to 1992, he authored several white papers analyzing Delaware revenue sources. Delaware also selected Mr. Clark to submit an economic report and affidavit to the United States Supreme Court in the original jurisdiction case of Delaware v. New York, 507 U.S. 490 (1993).
He entered Georgetown’s law school in 1992 where he earned honors as an articles editor of the Georgetown Law Journal, an Olin Law & Economics Fellow, and a member of the Order of the Coif. From 1995 to 1996, Mr. Clark clerked for Judge Boggs of the U.S. Court of Appeals of the Sixth Circuit. Mr. Clark then joined the law firm of Kirkland & Ellis as an associate from 1996-2001. He worked as an appellate litigator on numerous Supreme Court and other appellate cases and developed expertise in administrative law, statutory interpretation, as well as antitrust, labor, environmental, and telecommunications law.
Mr. Clark went on to serve in ENRD from 2001-2005 as a Deputy Assistant Attorney General selected by Attorney General Ashcroft and Assistant Attorney General Tom Sansonetti. In that capacity, he supervised ENRD’s Appellate and Indian Resources Sections. He reviewed, edited, and contributed to virtually every brief that ENRD filed in the Courts of Appeals, including several cases of exceptional significance that he personally briefed and argued. During his service in the early 2000s, Mr. Clark argued and won numerous cases in multiple U.S. Courts of Appeals and worked on all Supreme Court cases arising out of ENRD’s work.
In 2005, Mr. Clark returned to Kirkland & Ellis LLP as a partner, where he litigated until his return to ENRD in 2018. There he worked on numerous multi-billion-dollar matters and continued to argue many appellate cases. His practice operated at all levels — appellate litigation, trial court litigation, agency proceedings, and regulatory and litigation counseling. He has been named a Super Lawyer for multiple years running, highlighted in the Legal 500, named to the “Legal Who’s Who for Environmental Law” in Corporate Responsibility Magazine, rated A.V. preeminent by Martindale Hubbell, and named a member of the National Association of Distinguished Counsel’s Nation’s One Percent. He also was named one of America’s Top 100 High Stakes Litigators.
President Trump nominated Mr. Clark to be the Assistant Attorney General of the Environment and Natural Resources Division (ENRD) on June 7, 2017. He was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on October 11, 2018 and sworn into office on November 1, 2018, followed by an investiture ceremony on November 15, 2018.
Partner, Butler Snow LLP
Brian Jackson has 25 years of experience representing clients in drug and medical device litigation, healthcare litigation, and mass torts. His experience includes serving as national coordinating counsel, national science counsel, and trial counsel in drug and medical device cases. He is currently serving as Co-Lead Counsel in federal multidistrict litigation for a leading medical device manufacturer. He had extensive responsibilities in the Tylenol MDL and related state litigation, including serving as trial counsel in the past three years in a case tried in Atlantic City, NJ that resulted in a defense verdict that CVN named one of its “Top 10 Defense Verdicts of 2015,” and in a case tried in the United States District Court for the Central District of California that resulted in a favorable outcome. Brian earned his J.D. from Vanderbilt University, and serves as the Assistant Leader of Butler Snow’s Pharmaceutical, Medical Device & Healthcare Litigation Group.
Partner, Seeger Weiss LLP
Chris is a founding partner of Seeger Weiss and one of the nation’s leading attorneys in the areas of complex and mass tort actions. He has earned leadership appointments from state and federal courts throughout the U.S. in many noteworthy multi-district litigations, including pharmaceutical actions involving Vioxx, Zyprexa, Gadolinium, and DePuy ASR, among others. In 2012, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania appointed Chris to lead the multi-district litigation against the National Football League arising out of concussion-related injuries sustained by thousands of former NFL players. In the face of significant legal challenges, he was able to negotiate an uncapped global settlement with an estimated value of over one billion dollars. In 2016, he was appointed to the Plaintiffs' Steering Committee for the MDL concerning the Volkswagen diesel emissions scandal, in the U.S. District Court, Northern District of California. Chris served on the Settlement Committee and was one of the lead negotiators of a $14.7 billion settlement which includes a massive buyback program for consumers and billions of dollars for environmental remediation. He was also appointed Plaintiffs' Co-Lead Counsel for the Testosterone Replacement Therapy litigation in the Northern District of Illinois; as Co-Lead Counsel in the Proton Pump Inhibitor multidistrict litigation in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey; to the Executive and Settlement Committees for the National Prescription Opiate litigation in the Northern District of Ohio; to the Plaintiffs’ Settlement Committee, serving as Lead Negotiator, for the Syngenta GMO Corn litigation, resulting in a $1.5 billion nationwide settlement. Recent appointments include: Co-Lead Counsel in the 3M Combat Arms Earplug Products Liability Litigation, in the Northern District of Florida, where Chris represents thousands of U.S. military members who have suffered hearing loss and tinnitus; and Co-Lead Counsel in the Intel CPU Marketing, Sales Practices and Products Liability litigation in the District of Oregon. He is an elected member of the American Law Institute; a member of the Board of Advisors to the NYU School of Law, Center on Civil Justice; and serves on the Leadership Council to the Bolch Judicial Institute at Duke Law School.
Jonathan D. Selbin litigates consumer protection and defective products lawsuits as chair of Lieff Cabraser’s Economic Injury Product Defect Practice Group and member of the firm’s Executive Committee. He led a series of class actions under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act and developed the legal strategy responsible for the largest settlements in TCPA history. By 2016, the settlements resulted in the recovery of over $200 million dollars. Mr. Selbin is also a member of the inaugural Board of Counselors for Equal Justice Works, author of the certiorari opposition papers in the Whirlpool and Sears cases in the Supreme Court, and a 1993 magna cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School.
Partner, Skadden, Arps, Slate
John Beisner is the leader of Skadden’s Mass Torts, Insurance and Consumer Litigation Group. He focuses on the defense of purported class actions, mass tort matters and other complex civil litigation in both federal and state courts. He also regularly handles appellate litigations and has appeared in matters before the U.S. Supreme Court. Over the past 25 years, he has defended major U.S. and international corporations in more than 600 purported class actions filed in federal courts and in 40 state courts at both the trial and appellate levels. Those class actions have involved a wide variety of subjects, including antitrust/unfair competition, consumer fraud, RICO, ERISA, employment discrimination, environmental issues, product-related matters and securities. He also has handled numerous matters before the Judicial Panel on multidistrict litigation, as well as proceedings before various federal and state administrative agencies, particularly the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
Mr. Beisner has advised on numerous high-visibility corporate crisis situations, including congressional hearings, federal agency investigations, state attorneys general inquiries and General Accounting Office reviews. Among others, he represented Merck in its Vioxx litigation. He also negotiated a settlement with state attorneys general regarding the Countrywide Finance/Bank of America mortgage lending practices investigation, resulting in a creative loan modification program intended to help more than 400,000 families maintain ownership of their homes. He was named “Litigator of the Week” by The American Lawyer for his role in this case.
Mr. Beisner is a frequent writer and lecturer on class action and complex litigation issues. In 2013 he received the Burton Award for Legal Achievement, which recognizes excellence in legal scholarship. Mr. Beisner also has been an active participant in litigation reform initiatives before Congress, state legislatures and judicial committees. He has testified numerous times on class action and claims aggregation issues before the U.S. Senate and House Judiciary Committees (particularly with respect to the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005) and before state legislative committees. For his integral role in crafting the Class Action Fairness Act, Mr. Beisner was recognized with the 2011 Research and Policy Award by The U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform.
Mr. Beisner repeatedly has been selected for inclusion, and is in the top tier, inChambers USA: America's Leading Lawyers for Business in the area of products liability, and he also is listed in The Best Lawyers in America, The Legal 500 U.S., Who’s Who Legal and Lawdragon 500 Leading Lawyers in America. Mr. Beisner was profiled in an article by The American Lawyer that named Skadden as a finalist in the products liability section of its Litigation Department of the Year contest (January 2012). He was named one of the 2013 “BTI Client Service All-Stars” by The BTI Consulting Group for providing outstanding client service. He also was named one of Law360’s MVPs of 2011 in the products liability category, which recognizes those who have raised the bar in corporate law throughout the year. Law360 also profiled Mr. Beisner in two articles that named Skadden as a “Product Liability Group Of The Year” and“Class Action Group Of The Year” for 2010.
A list of the numerous published federal and state court decisions in which Mr. Beisner has played a role is available on request.
Assistant Attorney General, Environment and Natural Resources Division, U.S. Department of Justice
Jeffrey Bossert Clark was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on April 17, 1967. He is a graduate of Harvard University (A.B. in economics and history, 1989), the University of Delaware (M.A. in urban affairs and public policy, 1993), and the Georgetown University Law Center (J.D., 1995).
Mr. Clark began his career working for the State of Delaware’s Department of Finance, Division of Revenue as an economics analyst in the field of tax policy. During his tenure from 1989 to 1992, he authored several white papers analyzing Delaware revenue sources. Delaware also selected Mr. Clark to submit an economic report and affidavit to the United States Supreme Court in the original jurisdiction case of Delaware v. New York, 507 U.S. 490 (1993).
He entered Georgetown’s law school in 1992 where he earned honors as an articles editor of the Georgetown Law Journal, an Olin Law & Economics Fellow, and a member of the Order of the Coif. From 1995 to 1996, Mr. Clark clerked for Judge Boggs of the U.S. Court of Appeals of the Sixth Circuit. Mr. Clark then joined the law firm of Kirkland & Ellis as an associate from 1996-2001. He worked as an appellate litigator on numerous Supreme Court and other appellate cases and developed expertise in administrative law, statutory interpretation, as well as antitrust, labor, environmental, and telecommunications law.
Mr. Clark went on to serve in ENRD from 2001-2005 as a Deputy Assistant Attorney General selected by Attorney General Ashcroft and Assistant Attorney General Tom Sansonetti. In that capacity, he supervised ENRD’s Appellate and Indian Resources Sections. He reviewed, edited, and contributed to virtually every brief that ENRD filed in the Courts of Appeals, including several cases of exceptional significance that he personally briefed and argued. During his service in the early 2000s, Mr. Clark argued and won numerous cases in multiple U.S. Courts of Appeals and worked on all Supreme Court cases arising out of ENRD’s work.
In 2005, Mr. Clark returned to Kirkland & Ellis LLP as a partner, where he litigated until his return to ENRD in 2018. There he worked on numerous multi-billion-dollar matters and continued to argue many appellate cases. His practice operated at all levels — appellate litigation, trial court litigation, agency proceedings, and regulatory and litigation counseling. He has been named a Super Lawyer for multiple years running, highlighted in the Legal 500, named to the “Legal Who’s Who for Environmental Law” in Corporate Responsibility Magazine, rated A.V. preeminent by Martindale Hubbell, and named a member of the National Association of Distinguished Counsel’s Nation’s One Percent. He also was named one of America’s Top 100 High Stakes Litigators.
President Trump nominated Mr. Clark to be the Assistant Attorney General of the Environment and Natural Resources Division (ENRD) on June 7, 2017. He was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on October 11, 2018 and sworn into office on November 1, 2018, followed by an investiture ceremony on November 15, 2018.
Partner, Butler Snow LLP
Brian Jackson has 25 years of experience representing clients in drug and medical device litigation, healthcare litigation, and mass torts. His experience includes serving as national coordinating counsel, national science counsel, and trial counsel in drug and medical device cases. He is currently serving as Co-Lead Counsel in federal multidistrict litigation for a leading medical device manufacturer. He had extensive responsibilities in the Tylenol MDL and related state litigation, including serving as trial counsel in the past three years in a case tried in Atlantic City, NJ that resulted in a defense verdict that CVN named one of its “Top 10 Defense Verdicts of 2015,” and in a case tried in the United States District Court for the Central District of California that resulted in a favorable outcome. Brian earned his J.D. from Vanderbilt University, and serves as the Assistant Leader of Butler Snow’s Pharmaceutical, Medical Device & Healthcare Litigation Group.
Partner, Seeger Weiss LLP
Chris is a founding partner of Seeger Weiss and one of the nation’s leading attorneys in the areas of complex and mass tort actions. He has earned leadership appointments from state and federal courts throughout the U.S. in many noteworthy multi-district litigations, including pharmaceutical actions involving Vioxx, Zyprexa, Gadolinium, and DePuy ASR, among others. In 2012, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania appointed Chris to lead the multi-district litigation against the National Football League arising out of concussion-related injuries sustained by thousands of former NFL players. In the face of significant legal challenges, he was able to negotiate an uncapped global settlement with an estimated value of over one billion dollars. In 2016, he was appointed to the Plaintiffs' Steering Committee for the MDL concerning the Volkswagen diesel emissions scandal, in the U.S. District Court, Northern District of California. Chris served on the Settlement Committee and was one of the lead negotiators of a $14.7 billion settlement which includes a massive buyback program for consumers and billions of dollars for environmental remediation. He was also appointed Plaintiffs' Co-Lead Counsel for the Testosterone Replacement Therapy litigation in the Northern District of Illinois; as Co-Lead Counsel in the Proton Pump Inhibitor multidistrict litigation in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey; to the Executive and Settlement Committees for the National Prescription Opiate litigation in the Northern District of Ohio; to the Plaintiffs’ Settlement Committee, serving as Lead Negotiator, for the Syngenta GMO Corn litigation, resulting in a $1.5 billion nationwide settlement. Recent appointments include: Co-Lead Counsel in the 3M Combat Arms Earplug Products Liability Litigation, in the Northern District of Florida, where Chris represents thousands of U.S. military members who have suffered hearing loss and tinnitus; and Co-Lead Counsel in the Intel CPU Marketing, Sales Practices and Products Liability litigation in the District of Oregon. He is an elected member of the American Law Institute; a member of the Board of Advisors to the NYU School of Law, Center on Civil Justice; and serves on the Leadership Council to the Bolch Judicial Institute at Duke Law School.
Jonathan D. Selbin litigates consumer protection and defective products lawsuits as chair of Lieff Cabraser’s Economic Injury Product Defect Practice Group and member of the firm’s Executive Committee. He led a series of class actions under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act and developed the legal strategy responsible for the largest settlements in TCPA history. By 2016, the settlements resulted in the recovery of over $200 million dollars. Mr. Selbin is also a member of the inaugural Board of Counselors for Equal Justice Works, author of the certiorari opposition papers in the Whirlpool and Sears cases in the Supreme Court, and a 1993 magna cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School.
Partner, Skadden, Arps, Slate
John Beisner is the leader of Skadden’s Mass Torts, Insurance and Consumer Litigation Group. He focuses on the defense of purported class actions, mass tort matters and other complex civil litigation in both federal and state courts. He also regularly handles appellate litigations and has appeared in matters before the U.S. Supreme Court. Over the past 25 years, he has defended major U.S. and international corporations in more than 600 purported class actions filed in federal courts and in 40 state courts at both the trial and appellate levels. Those class actions have involved a wide variety of subjects, including antitrust/unfair competition, consumer fraud, RICO, ERISA, employment discrimination, environmental issues, product-related matters and securities. He also has handled numerous matters before the Judicial Panel on multidistrict litigation, as well as proceedings before various federal and state administrative agencies, particularly the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
Mr. Beisner has advised on numerous high-visibility corporate crisis situations, including congressional hearings, federal agency investigations, state attorneys general inquiries and General Accounting Office reviews. Among others, he represented Merck in its Vioxx litigation. He also negotiated a settlement with state attorneys general regarding the Countrywide Finance/Bank of America mortgage lending practices investigation, resulting in a creative loan modification program intended to help more than 400,000 families maintain ownership of their homes. He was named “Litigator of the Week” by The American Lawyer for his role in this case.
Mr. Beisner is a frequent writer and lecturer on class action and complex litigation issues. In 2013 he received the Burton Award for Legal Achievement, which recognizes excellence in legal scholarship. Mr. Beisner also has been an active participant in litigation reform initiatives before Congress, state legislatures and judicial committees. He has testified numerous times on class action and claims aggregation issues before the U.S. Senate and House Judiciary Committees (particularly with respect to the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005) and before state legislative committees. For his integral role in crafting the Class Action Fairness Act, Mr. Beisner was recognized with the 2011 Research and Policy Award by The U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform.
Mr. Beisner repeatedly has been selected for inclusion, and is in the top tier, inChambers USA: America's Leading Lawyers for Business in the area of products liability, and he also is listed in The Best Lawyers in America, The Legal 500 U.S., Who’s Who Legal and Lawdragon 500 Leading Lawyers in America. Mr. Beisner was profiled in an article by The American Lawyer that named Skadden as a finalist in the products liability section of its Litigation Department of the Year contest (January 2012). He was named one of the 2013 “BTI Client Service All-Stars” by The BTI Consulting Group for providing outstanding client service. He also was named one of Law360’s MVPs of 2011 in the products liability category, which recognizes those who have raised the bar in corporate law throughout the year. Law360 also profiled Mr. Beisner in two articles that named Skadden as a “Product Liability Group Of The Year” and“Class Action Group Of The Year” for 2010.
A list of the numerous published federal and state court decisions in which Mr. Beisner has played a role is available on request.
Executive Vice President of Global Governance, Chief Legal Officer and Corporate Secretary, Walmart Inc.
Rachel Brand is Walmart’s executive vice president of global governance, chief legal officer, and corporate secretary. She oversees the company’s global legal, compliance, ethics, corporate governance, digital citizenship, aviation, investigative, and corporate security functions, including Walmart’s Emergency Operations Center.
Immediately before joining Walmart, Rachel served as the United States Associate Attorney General and holds the distinction of being the first woman to serve in this role. She had previously served in the U.S. Department of Justice as the Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Policy during President George W. Bush’s administration. Her other government service includes an appointment by President Obama to serve as a Member of the U.S. Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, service as an Associate Counsel to the President at the White House, and judicial clerkships with Justice Charles Fried of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts and Justice Anthony Kennedy at the Supreme Court of the United States. In the private sector, Rachel was a lawyer in private practice at two law firms in Washington, D.C. and served as the Vice President and Chief Counsel for Regulatory Litigation at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Litigation Center.
Rachel serves on the board of directors for the Walmart Foundation and is the executive sponsor for Walmart’s Tribal Voices Associate Resource Group. Outside of Walmart, she serves on the board of directors for the International Justice Mission and is a member of The American Law Institute.
Rachel earned her Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Minnesota-Morris and her J.D. from Harvard Law School.
Special Counsel, Hunton Andrews Kurth
After serving on the United State Court of Appeals for the D. C. Circuit from 2005, Judge Griffith stepped down from the bench in 2020. Currently he is a Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School, a Fellow at the Wheatley Institute at Brigham Young University, and Special Counsel in the Washington, DC office of the law firm of Hunton Andrews Kurth. Most recently, he was a member of President Biden's Commission on the Supreme Court. He is the author of Civic Charity and the Constitution , and the co-author, along with former judges Michael Luttig and Michael McConnell, of Lost, Not Stolen: The Conservative Case that Trump Lost and Biden Won the 2020 Presidential Election. https://lostnotstolen.org/ . Before being appointed to the D. C. Circuit, Judge Griffith was the General Counsel at BYU; Senate Legal Counsel, the non-partisan chief legal officer of the U. S. Senate; and a partner at Wiley, Rein & Fielding. Long active in rule-of-law programs in former communist nations, Judge Griffith is a member of the international advisory board of the CEELI Institute in Prague. He is a graduate of BYU and the University of Virginia School of Law and is a member of the American Law Institute.
Partner, Keller Postman
Ashley Keller is one of the founding Partners of Keller Postman LLC. An experienced trial and appellate lawyer, Ashley helps set strategic direction across virtually all of the firm’s cases. He represents clients in a wide variety of practice areas and types of claims, including product-liability, antitrust, class action, and arbitration matters.
Ashley is one of the leaders of Keller Postman’s national product-liability practice. He leverages his ability to detangle complex concepts and develop novel legal theories to support individual client matters and as counsel on numerous product-liability multidistrict litigation matters. He chairs the plaintiffs’ Law & Briefing Committee in the Zantac (Ranitidine) Product Liability MDL in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida.
Ashley also litigates complex antitrust and class action matters. Among his notable cases, Ashley represents numerous States in antitrust litigation against Google for monopolizing products and services used by advertisers and publishers in online-display advertising.
Ashley also has played a central role in developing the firm’s pioneering arbitration practice, which includes pursuing individual arbitrations for clients whose claims are subject to arbitration clauses with class-action waivers. In part through managing the complexity of pursuing these individual claims simultaneously, the firm has secured millions in settlements for more than 500,000 employees and consumers.
Before launching Keller Postman, Ashley co-founded the litigation finance firm Gerchen Keller Capital, which grew to more than $1.3 billion in assets under management and was the world’s largest private investment manager focused on legal and regulatory risk prior to being acquired by Burford Capital in 2016.
Previously, Ashley was a partner at Bartlit Beck Herman Palenchar & Scott LLP, The American Lawyer’s litigation boutique of the year. While there, he handled various trial and appellate matters involving multi-billion-dollar securities and patent cases, contract disputes, mass torts, and class actions.
Ashley also worked as an analyst at Alyeska Investment Group, a Chicago-based market-neutral hedge fund, where he focused on investments in companies facing litigation and other complicated regulatory matters.
Ashley was named a 2021 Plaintiffs’ Lawyers Trailblazer by the National Law Journal. He is also listed on Lawdragon’s 500 Leading Lawyers in America, Lawdragon’s 500 Leading Plaintiff Consumer Lawyers, Lawdragon’s Leading Plaintiff Financial Lawyers, National Trial Lawyers’ Top 100, and Illinois Super Lawyers.
Ashley was a law clerk for Justice Anthony M. Kennedy at the Supreme Court of the United States and Judge Richard Posner at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College, received his M.B.A. from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and received his J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School, where he graduated first in his class.
Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center
Professor Molot writes and teaches in the fields of civil procedure, complex litigation, administrative law, statutory interpretation, federal courts, corporate finance, and insurance law. His articles have appeared in the Yale Law Journal, the Stanford Law Review, the Columbia Law Review, and the Virginia Law Review. Before entering law teaching, Professor Molot clerked for Justice Breyer on the U.S. Supreme Court and practiced law at Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton in New York, and at Kellogg, Huber, Hansen, Todd, Evans & Figel in Washington, D.C. He graduated magna cum laudefrom Yale College and magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, where he was Articles Co-Chair of the Harvard Law Review and won the Sears Prize (awarded to two students with highest GPAs in a class of more than 500). Professor Molot was a Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School in the fall of 2007.
Senior Fellow, Cato Institute
Walter Olson is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute’s Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies and is known for his writing on the American legal system. His books include The Rule of Lawyers, on mass litigation, The Excuse Factory, on lawsuits in the workplace, and most recently Schools for Misrule, on the state of the law schools. His first book, The Litigation Explosion, was one of the most widely discussed general-audience books on law of its time. It led the Washington Post to dub him “intellectual guru of tort reform.” Active on social media, he is known as the founder and principal writer of what is generally considered the oldest blog on law as well as one of the most popular, Overlawyered.com. He has advised many public officials from the White House to town councils and in 2015 was named by Gov. Larry Hogan to be co-chair of the Maryland Redistricting Reform Commission, which issued its report recommendations later that year to acclaim across the state.
Before joining Cato, Olson was a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and an editor at the magazine Regulation, then edited by future Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. Olson’s more than 400 broadcast appearances include all the major networks, NPR, the BBC, The Diane Rehm Show, and Oprah.
Partner, Skadden, Arps, Slate
John Beisner is the leader of Skadden’s Mass Torts, Insurance and Consumer Litigation Group. He focuses on the defense of purported class actions, mass tort matters and other complex civil litigation in both federal and state courts. He also regularly handles appellate litigations and has appeared in matters before the U.S. Supreme Court. Over the past 25 years, he has defended major U.S. and international corporations in more than 600 purported class actions filed in federal courts and in 40 state courts at both the trial and appellate levels. Those class actions have involved a wide variety of subjects, including antitrust/unfair competition, consumer fraud, RICO, ERISA, employment discrimination, environmental issues, product-related matters and securities. He also has handled numerous matters before the Judicial Panel on multidistrict litigation, as well as proceedings before various federal and state administrative agencies, particularly the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
Mr. Beisner has advised on numerous high-visibility corporate crisis situations, including congressional hearings, federal agency investigations, state attorneys general inquiries and General Accounting Office reviews. Among others, he represented Merck in its Vioxx litigation. He also negotiated a settlement with state attorneys general regarding the Countrywide Finance/Bank of America mortgage lending practices investigation, resulting in a creative loan modification program intended to help more than 400,000 families maintain ownership of their homes. He was named “Litigator of the Week” by The American Lawyer for his role in this case.
Mr. Beisner is a frequent writer and lecturer on class action and complex litigation issues. In 2013 he received the Burton Award for Legal Achievement, which recognizes excellence in legal scholarship. Mr. Beisner also has been an active participant in litigation reform initiatives before Congress, state legislatures and judicial committees. He has testified numerous times on class action and claims aggregation issues before the U.S. Senate and House Judiciary Committees (particularly with respect to the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005) and before state legislative committees. For his integral role in crafting the Class Action Fairness Act, Mr. Beisner was recognized with the 2011 Research and Policy Award by The U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform.
Mr. Beisner repeatedly has been selected for inclusion, and is in the top tier, inChambers USA: America's Leading Lawyers for Business in the area of products liability, and he also is listed in The Best Lawyers in America, The Legal 500 U.S., Who’s Who Legal and Lawdragon 500 Leading Lawyers in America. Mr. Beisner was profiled in an article by The American Lawyer that named Skadden as a finalist in the products liability section of its Litigation Department of the Year contest (January 2012). He was named one of the 2013 “BTI Client Service All-Stars” by The BTI Consulting Group for providing outstanding client service. He also was named one of Law360’s MVPs of 2011 in the products liability category, which recognizes those who have raised the bar in corporate law throughout the year. Law360 also profiled Mr. Beisner in two articles that named Skadden as a “Product Liability Group Of The Year” and“Class Action Group Of The Year” for 2010.
A list of the numerous published federal and state court decisions in which Mr. Beisner has played a role is available on request.
Executive Vice President of Global Governance, Chief Legal Officer and Corporate Secretary, Walmart Inc.
Rachel Brand is Walmart’s executive vice president of global governance, chief legal officer, and corporate secretary. She oversees the company’s global legal, compliance, ethics, corporate governance, digital citizenship, aviation, investigative, and corporate security functions, including Walmart’s Emergency Operations Center.
Immediately before joining Walmart, Rachel served as the United States Associate Attorney General and holds the distinction of being the first woman to serve in this role. She had previously served in the U.S. Department of Justice as the Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Policy during President George W. Bush’s administration. Her other government service includes an appointment by President Obama to serve as a Member of the U.S. Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, service as an Associate Counsel to the President at the White House, and judicial clerkships with Justice Charles Fried of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts and Justice Anthony Kennedy at the Supreme Court of the United States. In the private sector, Rachel was a lawyer in private practice at two law firms in Washington, D.C. and served as the Vice President and Chief Counsel for Regulatory Litigation at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Litigation Center.
Rachel serves on the board of directors for the Walmart Foundation and is the executive sponsor for Walmart’s Tribal Voices Associate Resource Group. Outside of Walmart, she serves on the board of directors for the International Justice Mission and is a member of The American Law Institute.
Rachel earned her Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Minnesota-Morris and her J.D. from Harvard Law School.
Special Counsel, Hunton Andrews Kurth
After serving on the United State Court of Appeals for the D. C. Circuit from 2005, Judge Griffith stepped down from the bench in 2020. Currently he is a Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School, a Fellow at the Wheatley Institute at Brigham Young University, and Special Counsel in the Washington, DC office of the law firm of Hunton Andrews Kurth. Most recently, he was a member of President Biden's Commission on the Supreme Court. He is the author of Civic Charity and the Constitution , and the co-author, along with former judges Michael Luttig and Michael McConnell, of Lost, Not Stolen: The Conservative Case that Trump Lost and Biden Won the 2020 Presidential Election. https://lostnotstolen.org/ . Before being appointed to the D. C. Circuit, Judge Griffith was the General Counsel at BYU; Senate Legal Counsel, the non-partisan chief legal officer of the U. S. Senate; and a partner at Wiley, Rein & Fielding. Long active in rule-of-law programs in former communist nations, Judge Griffith is a member of the international advisory board of the CEELI Institute in Prague. He is a graduate of BYU and the University of Virginia School of Law and is a member of the American Law Institute.
Partner, Keller Postman
Ashley Keller is one of the founding Partners of Keller Postman LLC. An experienced trial and appellate lawyer, Ashley helps set strategic direction across virtually all of the firm’s cases. He represents clients in a wide variety of practice areas and types of claims, including product-liability, antitrust, class action, and arbitration matters.
Ashley is one of the leaders of Keller Postman’s national product-liability practice. He leverages his ability to detangle complex concepts and develop novel legal theories to support individual client matters and as counsel on numerous product-liability multidistrict litigation matters. He chairs the plaintiffs’ Law & Briefing Committee in the Zantac (Ranitidine) Product Liability MDL in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida.
Ashley also litigates complex antitrust and class action matters. Among his notable cases, Ashley represents numerous States in antitrust litigation against Google for monopolizing products and services used by advertisers and publishers in online-display advertising.
Ashley also has played a central role in developing the firm’s pioneering arbitration practice, which includes pursuing individual arbitrations for clients whose claims are subject to arbitration clauses with class-action waivers. In part through managing the complexity of pursuing these individual claims simultaneously, the firm has secured millions in settlements for more than 500,000 employees and consumers.
Before launching Keller Postman, Ashley co-founded the litigation finance firm Gerchen Keller Capital, which grew to more than $1.3 billion in assets under management and was the world’s largest private investment manager focused on legal and regulatory risk prior to being acquired by Burford Capital in 2016.
Previously, Ashley was a partner at Bartlit Beck Herman Palenchar & Scott LLP, The American Lawyer’s litigation boutique of the year. While there, he handled various trial and appellate matters involving multi-billion-dollar securities and patent cases, contract disputes, mass torts, and class actions.
Ashley also worked as an analyst at Alyeska Investment Group, a Chicago-based market-neutral hedge fund, where he focused on investments in companies facing litigation and other complicated regulatory matters.
Ashley was named a 2021 Plaintiffs’ Lawyers Trailblazer by the National Law Journal. He is also listed on Lawdragon’s 500 Leading Lawyers in America, Lawdragon’s 500 Leading Plaintiff Consumer Lawyers, Lawdragon’s Leading Plaintiff Financial Lawyers, National Trial Lawyers’ Top 100, and Illinois Super Lawyers.
Ashley was a law clerk for Justice Anthony M. Kennedy at the Supreme Court of the United States and Judge Richard Posner at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College, received his M.B.A. from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and received his J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School, where he graduated first in his class.
Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center
Professor Molot writes and teaches in the fields of civil procedure, complex litigation, administrative law, statutory interpretation, federal courts, corporate finance, and insurance law. His articles have appeared in the Yale Law Journal, the Stanford Law Review, the Columbia Law Review, and the Virginia Law Review. Before entering law teaching, Professor Molot clerked for Justice Breyer on the U.S. Supreme Court and practiced law at Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton in New York, and at Kellogg, Huber, Hansen, Todd, Evans & Figel in Washington, D.C. He graduated magna cum laudefrom Yale College and magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, where he was Articles Co-Chair of the Harvard Law Review and won the Sears Prize (awarded to two students with highest GPAs in a class of more than 500). Professor Molot was a Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School in the fall of 2007.
Senior Fellow, Cato Institute
Walter Olson is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute’s Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies and is known for his writing on the American legal system. His books include The Rule of Lawyers, on mass litigation, The Excuse Factory, on lawsuits in the workplace, and most recently Schools for Misrule, on the state of the law schools. His first book, The Litigation Explosion, was one of the most widely discussed general-audience books on law of its time. It led the Washington Post to dub him “intellectual guru of tort reform.” Active on social media, he is known as the founder and principal writer of what is generally considered the oldest blog on law as well as one of the most popular, Overlawyered.com. He has advised many public officials from the White House to town councils and in 2015 was named by Gov. Larry Hogan to be co-chair of the Maryland Redistricting Reform Commission, which issued its report recommendations later that year to acclaim across the state.
Before joining Cato, Olson was a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and an editor at the magazine Regulation, then edited by future Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. Olson’s more than 400 broadcast appearances include all the major networks, NPR, the BBC, The Diane Rehm Show, and Oprah.
Associate Professor of Law, William and Mary Law School
Partner, Skadden, Arps, Slate
John Beisner is the leader of Skadden’s Mass Torts, Insurance and Consumer Litigation Group. He focuses on the defense of purported class actions, mass tort matters and other complex civil litigation in both federal and state courts. He also regularly handles appellate litigations and has appeared in matters before the U.S. Supreme Court. Over the past 25 years, he has defended major U.S. and international corporations in more than 600 purported class actions filed in federal courts and in 40 state courts at both the trial and appellate levels. Those class actions have involved a wide variety of subjects, including antitrust/unfair competition, consumer fraud, RICO, ERISA, employment discrimination, environmental issues, product-related matters and securities. He also has handled numerous matters before the Judicial Panel on multidistrict litigation, as well as proceedings before various federal and state administrative agencies, particularly the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
Mr. Beisner has advised on numerous high-visibility corporate crisis situations, including congressional hearings, federal agency investigations, state attorneys general inquiries and General Accounting Office reviews. Among others, he represented Merck in its Vioxx litigation. He also negotiated a settlement with state attorneys general regarding the Countrywide Finance/Bank of America mortgage lending practices investigation, resulting in a creative loan modification program intended to help more than 400,000 families maintain ownership of their homes. He was named “Litigator of the Week” by The American Lawyer for his role in this case.
Mr. Beisner is a frequent writer and lecturer on class action and complex litigation issues. In 2013 he received the Burton Award for Legal Achievement, which recognizes excellence in legal scholarship. Mr. Beisner also has been an active participant in litigation reform initiatives before Congress, state legislatures and judicial committees. He has testified numerous times on class action and claims aggregation issues before the U.S. Senate and House Judiciary Committees (particularly with respect to the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005) and before state legislative committees. For his integral role in crafting the Class Action Fairness Act, Mr. Beisner was recognized with the 2011 Research and Policy Award by The U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform.
Mr. Beisner repeatedly has been selected for inclusion, and is in the top tier, inChambers USA: America's Leading Lawyers for Business in the area of products liability, and he also is listed in The Best Lawyers in America, The Legal 500 U.S., Who’s Who Legal and Lawdragon 500 Leading Lawyers in America. Mr. Beisner was profiled in an article by The American Lawyer that named Skadden as a finalist in the products liability section of its Litigation Department of the Year contest (January 2012). He was named one of the 2013 “BTI Client Service All-Stars” by The BTI Consulting Group for providing outstanding client service. He also was named one of Law360’s MVPs of 2011 in the products liability category, which recognizes those who have raised the bar in corporate law throughout the year. Law360 also profiled Mr. Beisner in two articles that named Skadden as a “Product Liability Group Of The Year” and“Class Action Group Of The Year” for 2010.
A list of the numerous published federal and state court decisions in which Mr. Beisner has played a role is available on request.
Partner, Skadden, Arps, Slate
John Beisner is the leader of Skadden’s Mass Torts, Insurance and Consumer Litigation Group. He focuses on the defense of purported class actions, mass tort matters and other complex civil litigation in both federal and state courts. He also regularly handles appellate litigations and has appeared in matters before the U.S. Supreme Court. Over the past 25 years, he has defended major U.S. and international corporations in more than 600 purported class actions filed in federal courts and in 40 state courts at both the trial and appellate levels. Those class actions have involved a wide variety of subjects, including antitrust/unfair competition, consumer fraud, RICO, ERISA, employment discrimination, environmental issues, product-related matters and securities. He also has handled numerous matters before the Judicial Panel on multidistrict litigation, as well as proceedings before various federal and state administrative agencies, particularly the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
Mr. Beisner has advised on numerous high-visibility corporate crisis situations, including congressional hearings, federal agency investigations, state attorneys general inquiries and General Accounting Office reviews. Among others, he represented Merck in its Vioxx litigation. He also negotiated a settlement with state attorneys general regarding the Countrywide Finance/Bank of America mortgage lending practices investigation, resulting in a creative loan modification program intended to help more than 400,000 families maintain ownership of their homes. He was named “Litigator of the Week” by The American Lawyer for his role in this case.
Mr. Beisner is a frequent writer and lecturer on class action and complex litigation issues. In 2013 he received the Burton Award for Legal Achievement, which recognizes excellence in legal scholarship. Mr. Beisner also has been an active participant in litigation reform initiatives before Congress, state legislatures and judicial committees. He has testified numerous times on class action and claims aggregation issues before the U.S. Senate and House Judiciary Committees (particularly with respect to the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005) and before state legislative committees. For his integral role in crafting the Class Action Fairness Act, Mr. Beisner was recognized with the 2011 Research and Policy Award by The U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform.
Mr. Beisner repeatedly has been selected for inclusion, and is in the top tier, inChambers USA: America's Leading Lawyers for Business in the area of products liability, and he also is listed in The Best Lawyers in America, The Legal 500 U.S., Who’s Who Legal and Lawdragon 500 Leading Lawyers in America. Mr. Beisner was profiled in an article by The American Lawyer that named Skadden as a finalist in the products liability section of its Litigation Department of the Year contest (January 2012). He was named one of the 2013 “BTI Client Service All-Stars” by The BTI Consulting Group for providing outstanding client service. He also was named one of Law360’s MVPs of 2011 in the products liability category, which recognizes those who have raised the bar in corporate law throughout the year. Law360 also profiled Mr. Beisner in two articles that named Skadden as a “Product Liability Group Of The Year” and“Class Action Group Of The Year” for 2010.
A list of the numerous published federal and state court decisions in which Mr. Beisner has played a role is available on request.
Director of Litigation and Senior Attorney, Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute
Theodore H. Frank is director at the Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute and the Center for Class Action Fairness. Frank founded and ran CCAF as a non-profit, public interest law firm in 2009.
Frank has won several landmark appeals and tens of millions of dollars for consumers and other plaintiffs through his class action work. Adam Liptak of The New York Times calls Frank “the leading critic of abusive class action settlements” and the American Lawyer Litigation Daily referred to him as “the indefatigable scourge of underwhelming class action settlements.”
Previously, Frank clerked for the Honorable Frank H. Easterbrook on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, and was a litigator at firms in Washington and Los Angeles and a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Frank is a frequent public speaker and has testified before Congress multiple times on legal issues. He has been profiled by The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, GQ, and the ABA Journal, among other publications.
In 2008, Frank was elected to membership in the American Law Institute. He also serves on the Executive Committee of the Federalist Society Litigation Practice Group. Frank graduated from The University of Chicago Law School in 1994 with high honors and as a member of the Order of the Coif and the Law Review. He is a member of the District of Columbia Bar and the state bars of California and Illinois.
Partner, Skadden, Arps, Slate
John Beisner is the leader of Skadden’s Mass Torts, Insurance and Consumer Litigation Group. He focuses on the defense of purported class actions, mass tort matters and other complex civil litigation in both federal and state courts. He also regularly handles appellate litigations and has appeared in matters before the U.S. Supreme Court. Over the past 25 years, he has defended major U.S. and international corporations in more than 600 purported class actions filed in federal courts and in 40 state courts at both the trial and appellate levels. Those class actions have involved a wide variety of subjects, including antitrust/unfair competition, consumer fraud, RICO, ERISA, employment discrimination, environmental issues, product-related matters and securities. He also has handled numerous matters before the Judicial Panel on multidistrict litigation, as well as proceedings before various federal and state administrative agencies, particularly the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
Mr. Beisner has advised on numerous high-visibility corporate crisis situations, including congressional hearings, federal agency investigations, state attorneys general inquiries and General Accounting Office reviews. Among others, he represented Merck in its Vioxx litigation. He also negotiated a settlement with state attorneys general regarding the Countrywide Finance/Bank of America mortgage lending practices investigation, resulting in a creative loan modification program intended to help more than 400,000 families maintain ownership of their homes. He was named “Litigator of the Week” by The American Lawyer for his role in this case.
Mr. Beisner is a frequent writer and lecturer on class action and complex litigation issues. In 2013 he received the Burton Award for Legal Achievement, which recognizes excellence in legal scholarship. Mr. Beisner also has been an active participant in litigation reform initiatives before Congress, state legislatures and judicial committees. He has testified numerous times on class action and claims aggregation issues before the U.S. Senate and House Judiciary Committees (particularly with respect to the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005) and before state legislative committees. For his integral role in crafting the Class Action Fairness Act, Mr. Beisner was recognized with the 2011 Research and Policy Award by The U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform.
Mr. Beisner repeatedly has been selected for inclusion, and is in the top tier, inChambers USA: America's Leading Lawyers for Business in the area of products liability, and he also is listed in The Best Lawyers in America, The Legal 500 U.S., Who’s Who Legal and Lawdragon 500 Leading Lawyers in America. Mr. Beisner was profiled in an article by The American Lawyer that named Skadden as a finalist in the products liability section of its Litigation Department of the Year contest (January 2012). He was named one of the 2013 “BTI Client Service All-Stars” by The BTI Consulting Group for providing outstanding client service. He also was named one of Law360’s MVPs of 2011 in the products liability category, which recognizes those who have raised the bar in corporate law throughout the year. Law360 also profiled Mr. Beisner in two articles that named Skadden as a “Product Liability Group Of The Year” and“Class Action Group Of The Year” for 2010.
A list of the numerous published federal and state court decisions in which Mr. Beisner has played a role is available on request.
Who Is Paying for that Lawsuit?
John H. Beisner, Travis D. Lenkner
Litigation Practice Group Teleforum
The advisory committee on the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure is considering proposed amendments to...
Trying Cases and Settlement
John H. Beisner, Jeffrey Bossert Clark, G. Brian Jackson, Christopher A. Seeger, Jonathan D. Selbin
Multidistrict Litigation (MDL) Conference
Multidistrict litigation (“MDL”) accounts for nearly half of all civil cases in federal courts. Although...
Trying Cases and Settlement
John H. Beisner, Jeffrey Bossert Clark, G. Brian Jackson, Christopher A. Seeger, Jonathan D. Selbin
Multidistrict Litigation (MDL) Conference
Multidistrict litigation (“MDL”) accounts for nearly half of all civil cases in federal courts. Although...
Litigation: The New Age of Litigation Financing
John H. Beisner, Rachel L. Brand, Thomas B. Griffith, Ashley Keller, Jonathan T. Molot, Walter K. Olson
2013 National Lawyers Convention
Private litigants and state governments are turning to new sources of funding for lawsuits. Private...
Litigation: The New Age of Litigation Financing
John H. Beisner, Rachel L. Brand, Thomas B. Griffith, Ashley Keller, Jonathan T. Molot, Walter K. Olson
2013 National Lawyers Convention
Private litigants and state governments are turning to new sources of funding for lawsuits. Private...
Canadian Class Action Law: A Flawed Model for European Class Actions
Allison Orr Larsen, Karl Thompson, John H. Beisner
Activists urging European Union nations to adopt the class action device have recently begun citing...
Dukes, et al. v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.: Ninth Circuit Affirms Largest Employment Discrimination Class in History
Karl Thompson, John H. Beisner, Evelyn Becker
On June 21, 2004, a district court in the Northern District of California certified the...
Class Action Fairness Act: Two Years Later - Event Audio
Michael D. Hausfeld, Charles E. Stuckey, Theodore "Ted" Frank, John H. Beisner, John J. Stoia
Litigation Practice Group and Corporations, Securities & Antitrust Practice Group
On February 18, 2005 President Bush signed the Class Action Fairness- Act into law. Two...