Fuller E. Callaway Chair of Law, University of Georgia School of Law
Elizabeth Chamblee Burch joined the School of Law faculty in 2011. She was promoted to the rank of full professor in 2015 and served a visiting professor at Harvard Law School in 2017. After holding the Charles H. Kirbo Chair of Law for two years, she assumed the Fuller E. Callaway Chair of Law in 2019. She is the author of Mass Tort Deals: Backroom Bargaining in Multidistrict Litigation (Cambridge University Press 2019) and her teaching and research interests include civil procedure, class actions and mass torts.
Burch is an award-winning scholar whose groundbreaking work on multidistrict litigation and class actions won the American Law Institute’s Early Career Scholars Medal in 2015, the Fred C. Zacharias Memorial Prize for Professional Responsibility Scholarship in 2016 and the Mangano Dispute Resolution Advancement Award in 2019.
Burch has published over 30 articles and essays in respected journals such as the New York University Law Review, Yale Law Journal, Cornell Law Review, Virginia Law Review, Vanderbilt Law Review, Washington University Law Review, Boston University Law Review and George Washington Law Review, among others. She co-authors a casebook titled The Law of Class Actions and Other Aggregate Litigation with the late Richard A. Nagareda, Robert G. Bone, Charles Silver, and Patrick Woolley.
Burch has delivered over 70 lectures at research institutions across the United States and abroad to diverse audiences—from law professors at their annual meeting to federal judges at their judicial retreats, lawyers and jurists at the American Law Institute and the American Bar Association, and psychologists at the International Congress on the Psychology of Law. She was elected as a member of the American Law Institute in 2013, and she is a frequent commentator in various international and national news media such as National Public Radio’s Marketplace, BBC World News, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today and The L.A. Times.
Before joining the School of Law's faculty, she was an assistant professor at Florida State University College of Law, where she received the university-wide Graduate Teaching Award and was voted “Professor of the Year” by second- and third-year students. Burch began her academic career in 2006 at Cumberland School of Law, part of Samford University, where she received the Harvey S. Jackson Excellence in Teaching Award and the Lightfoot, Franklin & White Faculty Scholarship Award. In 2014, she received the School of Law’s John C. O’Byrne Memorial Award for Significant Contributions Furthering Student-Faculty Relations.
Before entering the legal academy, Burch worked as an associate at Holland & Knight in Atlanta, where she practiced in the area of complex litigation, including securities class actions. She has served as the mass torts subcommittee chair for the American Bar Association's Class Action and Derivative Suits Committee, on the executive board for the Association of American Law Schools’ Scholarship Committee and as a co-editor of the Mass Tort Litigation Blog.
She earned her bachelor's degree cum laude from Vanderbilt University and her Juris Doctor cum laude from Florida State University, where she served as the writing and research editor for the Florida State University Law Review.
Milton R. Underwood Chair in Free Enterprise, Vanderbilt University Law School
Brian Fitzpatrick is the Milton R. Underwood Chair in Free Enterprise and Professor of Law at Vanderbilt Law School, where his research focuses on class action litigation, federal courts, judicial selection, and constitutional law. He is best known for his empirical studies of class action settlements as well as his book The Conservative Case for Class Actions (University of Chicago Press, 2019). Professor Fitzpatrick joined Vanderbilt's law faculty in 2007 after serving as the John M. Olin Fellow at New York University School of Law. He graduated first in his class from Harvard Law School and went on to clerk for Judge Diarmuid O'Scannlain on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and Justice Antonin Scalia on the U.S. Supreme Court. After his clerkships, Professor Fitzpatrick practiced commercial and appellate litigation for several years at Sidley Austin in Washington, D.C., and served as Special Counsel for Supreme Court Nominations to U.S. Senator John Cornyn. Before earning his law degree, Fitzpatrick graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor's of science in chemical engineering from the University of Notre Dame. He has received the Hall-Hartman Outstanding Professor Award, which recognizes excellence in classroom teaching, for his Civil Procedure and Federal Courts courses.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit
Britt C. Grant is a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. Judge Grant was appointed to the federal bench in August 2018 after serving as a Justice on the Supreme Court of Georgia. Prior to her judicial appointment, she served as the Solicitor General of Georgia and practiced in the Washington, D.C. office of Kirkland & Ellis. Upon graduation from law school, Judge Grant served as a law clerk to then-Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. She earned her J.D., with distinction, from Stanford Law School, where she was the Co-Founder of the Stanford National Security and the Law Society, and the President of the Stanford Law chapter of the Federalist Society. Before enrolling in law school, Judge Grant served in The White House in a variety of domestic policy roles as well as on the staff of Congressman Nathan Deal. Judge Grant earned her B.A., summa cum laude, from Wake Forest University, where she was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. She now lives in Atlanta, Georgia with her husband and three children.
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.
Fuller E. Callaway Chair of Law, University of Georgia School of Law
Elizabeth Chamblee Burch joined the School of Law faculty in 2011. She was promoted to the rank of full professor in 2015 and served a visiting professor at Harvard Law School in 2017. After holding the Charles H. Kirbo Chair of Law for two years, she assumed the Fuller E. Callaway Chair of Law in 2019. She is the author of Mass Tort Deals: Backroom Bargaining in Multidistrict Litigation (Cambridge University Press 2019) and her teaching and research interests include civil procedure, class actions and mass torts.
Burch is an award-winning scholar whose groundbreaking work on multidistrict litigation and class actions won the American Law Institute’s Early Career Scholars Medal in 2015, the Fred C. Zacharias Memorial Prize for Professional Responsibility Scholarship in 2016 and the Mangano Dispute Resolution Advancement Award in 2019.
Burch has published over 30 articles and essays in respected journals such as the New York University Law Review, Yale Law Journal, Cornell Law Review, Virginia Law Review, Vanderbilt Law Review, Washington University Law Review, Boston University Law Review and George Washington Law Review, among others. She co-authors a casebook titled The Law of Class Actions and Other Aggregate Litigation with the late Richard A. Nagareda, Robert G. Bone, Charles Silver, and Patrick Woolley.
Burch has delivered over 70 lectures at research institutions across the United States and abroad to diverse audiences—from law professors at their annual meeting to federal judges at their judicial retreats, lawyers and jurists at the American Law Institute and the American Bar Association, and psychologists at the International Congress on the Psychology of Law. She was elected as a member of the American Law Institute in 2013, and she is a frequent commentator in various international and national news media such as National Public Radio’s Marketplace, BBC World News, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today and The L.A. Times.
Before joining the School of Law's faculty, she was an assistant professor at Florida State University College of Law, where she received the university-wide Graduate Teaching Award and was voted “Professor of the Year” by second- and third-year students. Burch began her academic career in 2006 at Cumberland School of Law, part of Samford University, where she received the Harvey S. Jackson Excellence in Teaching Award and the Lightfoot, Franklin & White Faculty Scholarship Award. In 2014, she received the School of Law’s John C. O’Byrne Memorial Award for Significant Contributions Furthering Student-Faculty Relations.
Before entering the legal academy, Burch worked as an associate at Holland & Knight in Atlanta, where she practiced in the area of complex litigation, including securities class actions. She has served as the mass torts subcommittee chair for the American Bar Association's Class Action and Derivative Suits Committee, on the executive board for the Association of American Law Schools’ Scholarship Committee and as a co-editor of the Mass Tort Litigation Blog.
She earned her bachelor's degree cum laude from Vanderbilt University and her Juris Doctor cum laude from Florida State University, where she served as the writing and research editor for the Florida State University Law Review.
Milton R. Underwood Chair in Free Enterprise, Vanderbilt University Law School
Brian Fitzpatrick is the Milton R. Underwood Chair in Free Enterprise and Professor of Law at Vanderbilt Law School, where his research focuses on class action litigation, federal courts, judicial selection, and constitutional law. He is best known for his empirical studies of class action settlements as well as his book The Conservative Case for Class Actions (University of Chicago Press, 2019). Professor Fitzpatrick joined Vanderbilt's law faculty in 2007 after serving as the John M. Olin Fellow at New York University School of Law. He graduated first in his class from Harvard Law School and went on to clerk for Judge Diarmuid O'Scannlain on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and Justice Antonin Scalia on the U.S. Supreme Court. After his clerkships, Professor Fitzpatrick practiced commercial and appellate litigation for several years at Sidley Austin in Washington, D.C., and served as Special Counsel for Supreme Court Nominations to U.S. Senator John Cornyn. Before earning his law degree, Fitzpatrick graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor's of science in chemical engineering from the University of Notre Dame. He has received the Hall-Hartman Outstanding Professor Award, which recognizes excellence in classroom teaching, for his Civil Procedure and Federal Courts courses.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit
Britt C. Grant is a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. Judge Grant was appointed to the federal bench in August 2018 after serving as a Justice on the Supreme Court of Georgia. Prior to her judicial appointment, she served as the Solicitor General of Georgia and practiced in the Washington, D.C. office of Kirkland & Ellis. Upon graduation from law school, Judge Grant served as a law clerk to then-Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. She earned her J.D., with distinction, from Stanford Law School, where she was the Co-Founder of the Stanford National Security and the Law Society, and the President of the Stanford Law chapter of the Federalist Society. Before enrolling in law school, Judge Grant served in The White House in a variety of domestic policy roles as well as on the staff of Congressman Nathan Deal. Judge Grant earned her B.A., summa cum laude, from Wake Forest University, where she was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. She now lives in Atlanta, Georgia with her husband and three children.
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.
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.
A partner in the Litigation Department, David M. Bernick is a renowned trial lawyer and strategist, having acted as lead trial counsel for major U.S. and international corporations in the chemical, tobacco, technology and life sciences industries for 35 years. His experience spans complex class action and other aggregated litigation, mass torts and product liability, antitrust and competition, business restructuring and reorganization, mergers and acquisitions, corporate governance, securities and criminal environmental litigation. In 2016, Mr. Bernick was named the winner in the “Litigation: Business Trial Lawyers” category of the 2016 Chambers USA Awards. Bernick has a Masters from Yale, and graduated from the University of Chicago Law School.
Judge Robreno received a B.A. in History from Westfield State University, an M.S. in Labor Studies from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Massachusetts, and a J.D. from Rutgers Law School at Camden, New Jersey, where he served as articles editor of the law review. He was in private practice in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania from 1981-1992. At the time of his induction to the bench he was a partner in a large Philadelphia law firm. From 1978-1981, he served as a trial attorney for the United States Department of Justice Antitrust Division and Special Assistant U.S. Attorney. Throughout his nearly twenty five years judicial career, Judge Robreno has carried a full docket of civil and criminal cases. He is the author of over 1800 judicial opinions. Since 2008, Judge Robreno has presided over MDL-875 personal injury asbestos litigation, the largest multi-district litigation in the federal courts where he has been praised for resolving over 180,000 cases consisting of some 10 million claims. During his judicial career, in addition to his assignment as a District Judge in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, he has sat by designation with the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, and Eleventh Circuit, the Ninth Circuit and the District Courts in New Jersey, Delaware and Western District of Pennsylvania. He is currently sitting by designation in the District of Delaware.
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.
Counsel in the Complex Commercial Litigation department at McGuireWoods LLP. Co-author of The Class Action Playbook (Oxford Univ. Press 2010). Blogs at the Class Action Countermeasures blog at classactioncountermeasures.com.
A partner in the Litigation Department, David M. Bernick is a renowned trial lawyer and strategist, having acted as lead trial counsel for major U.S. and international corporations in the chemical, tobacco, technology and life sciences industries for 35 years. His experience spans complex class action and other aggregated litigation, mass torts and product liability, antitrust and competition, business restructuring and reorganization, mergers and acquisitions, corporate governance, securities and criminal environmental litigation. In 2016, Mr. Bernick was named the winner in the “Litigation: Business Trial Lawyers” category of the 2016 Chambers USA Awards. Bernick has a Masters from Yale, and graduated from the University of Chicago Law School.
Judge Robreno received a B.A. in History from Westfield State University, an M.S. in Labor Studies from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Massachusetts, and a J.D. from Rutgers Law School at Camden, New Jersey, where he served as articles editor of the law review. He was in private practice in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania from 1981-1992. At the time of his induction to the bench he was a partner in a large Philadelphia law firm. From 1978-1981, he served as a trial attorney for the United States Department of Justice Antitrust Division and Special Assistant U.S. Attorney. Throughout his nearly twenty five years judicial career, Judge Robreno has carried a full docket of civil and criminal cases. He is the author of over 1800 judicial opinions. Since 2008, Judge Robreno has presided over MDL-875 personal injury asbestos litigation, the largest multi-district litigation in the federal courts where he has been praised for resolving over 180,000 cases consisting of some 10 million claims. During his judicial career, in addition to his assignment as a District Judge in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, he has sat by designation with the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, and Eleventh Circuit, the Ninth Circuit and the District Courts in New Jersey, Delaware and Western District of Pennsylvania. He is currently sitting by designation in the District of Delaware.
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.
Counsel in the Complex Commercial Litigation department at McGuireWoods LLP. Co-author of The Class Action Playbook (Oxford Univ. Press 2010). Blogs at the Class Action Countermeasures blog at classactioncountermeasures.com.
Litigation: Are MDL Judges Too Powerful?
Elizabeth Chamblee Burch, Brian T. Fitzpatrick, Britt C. Grant, Christopher A. Seeger
2020 National Lawyers Convention
On November 10, 2020, The Federalist Society's Litigation Practice Group hosted a virtual panel for...
Litigation: Are MDL Judges Too Powerful?
Elizabeth Chamblee Burch, Brian T. Fitzpatrick, Britt C. Grant, Christopher A. Seeger
2020 National Lawyers Convention
On November 10, 2020, The Federalist Society's Litigation Practice Group hosted a virtual panel for...
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...
Eliminating Meritless Claims
David M. Bernick, Eduardo Robreno, Christopher A. Seeger, Andrew Trask
Multidistrict Litigation (MDL) Conference
Multidistrict litigation (“MDL”) accounts for nearly half of all civil cases in federal courts. Although...
Eliminating Meritless Claims
David M. Bernick, Eduardo Robreno, Christopher A. Seeger, Andrew Trask
Multidistrict Litigation (MDL) Conference
Multidistrict litigation (“MDL”) accounts for nearly half of all civil cases in federal courts. Although...