Product Liability Group Of The Year: Covington & Burling

Covington was named a 2017 Product Liability Practice Group of the Year by Law360. According to Paul Schmidt, "It's a pretty new group, relatively speaking, and a younger group. Our practice probably started 10 years ago and has really been completely built into a top-tier practice over that time-frame. … I think that gives us a certain nice energy." He adds that he finds product liability defense work to be “tremendously rewarding,” especially in the pharmaceutical world, as the team often defends “medicine that literally saves people's lives."

Commenting on Covington’s representation of Takata in the midst of the company’s airbag recall litigation, Michael Imbroscio says, it was important to the firm to consider the human side of the case. "Obviously the problems facing Takata were really overwhelming and probably never really experienced by any company in the history of companies," Imbroscio comments. "Basically their entire existence was at stake."

Phyllis Jones adds that the practice group benefits from lawyers who deeply understand the industries in which their clients are major players, stating that it's that expert-level understanding that allows Covington to not just take a "mechanistic" approach to litigation. "Whenever we take on a matter…we're always thinking more broadly: What does this mean for the industry?" Jones says. "What are the implications?"