A new study into U.S. product liability litigation has found that Husch Blackwell is among the top three most active product liability defense law firms for the period ranging from 2018 to 2022.
The study, conducted by legal analytics firm Lex Machina, tracked federal court product liability litigation and determined that, except for a decrease in 2021, product cases have been on the rise for the past decade with a record 5,800 cases filed last year alone.
“Like everything we do, our growth is driven solely by our clients’ needs. We continue to be asked to develop and deliver customized national coordinating counsel programs for clients across multiple industries. These programs have been enormously successful in achieving the business goals of our clients. To support this, we have deepened our litigation bench in the product liability and mass torts areas,” said Brandan Mueller, a St. Louis-based partner who leads Husch Blackwell’s mass tort and product liability practice. “Because our clients continue to trust us and new clients see what we can do, that capability is showing up in the Lex Machina data.”
Using machine learning and technology-assisted attorney review, Lex Machina’s Legal Analytics platform extracts data from PACER (Public Access to Court Electronic Records), which contains documents from federal district and appellate courts. According to Lex Machina, “[t]he raw data is then cleaned, tagged, structured, and loaded into Lex Machina’s proprietary platform.”
Husch Blackwell’s product liability and toxic tort practices are nationally ranked in leading legal directories, including a nationwide Band 1 designation in Chambers USA, which notes that the group “is frequently called upon to act in a national coordinating role as well as…in trial and settlement negotiations. It regularly acts for clients in the manufacturing, agriculture, and healthcare sectors, among others.”