Our firm represents some of the world’s leading pharmaceutical, medical device, other life sciences and consumer products companies in their most significant mass tort and product liability litigation.
Our lawyers have decades of experience resolving these cases. By strategically charting a path to victory at the outset, our trial lawyers achieve excellent outcomes for our clients. We love to try cases and have helped our clients secure jury verdicts in their favor in state and federal courts throughout the country. But we also win complex mass torts and product liability litigations short of trial by exposing claims based on pseudo-science by filing Daubert and Frye motions (and other analogous state law motions), conducting pretrial evidentiary hearings, and filing motions for summary judgment. Because we present a credible trial threat, and because our focus on the science and facts raises the stakes for plaintiffs’ firms, we produce better settlements.
Our appellate lawyers have also won landmark life science and product liability cases in state and federal appellate courts—including in the U.S. Supreme Court—on significant tort law issues.
Our attorneys are widely regarded as some of the premier products liability attorneys in the United States and have been recognized repeatedly as the “go to” lawyers by numerous legal publications, including Chambers USA, The National Law Journal, Law360, The International Who’s Who of Product Liability Defence Lawyers, The Best Lawyers in America, Fortune, and Crain’s New York Business.
Representative Current Life Science Clients
- Allergan
- Forest Laboratories
- Colgate-Palmolive Company
- Express Scripts
Recent Representations
- We serve as trial counsel for Colgate-Palmolive Company in cases venued throughout the country in which individuals claim to have contracted asbestos-related diseases from consumer use of cosmetic talcum powders allegedly tainted with asbestos formerly manufactured by our client. Since QE became involved in these cases, through an aggressive and focused litigation strategy, we have obtained dismissals in many cases and have recently achieved a string of significant victories at the pretrial, trial, post-trial and appellate stages of the litigation:
- QE obtained summary judgment victories in Pennsylvania, California, Maryland, New York, Rhode Island and Wisconsin courts, and in federal district court in Georgia and North Carolina. QE successfully defended three straight challenges to those summary judgment victories.
- QE has also successfully moved, in multiple jurisdictions, to exclude testimony from experts who claimed to have found asbestos in our client’s talcum powder products, by demonstrating that those experts employed flawed microscopy techniques. Courts that have granted such motions include Pennsylvania, California, New York, Maryland, and federal district courts in Georgia and the District of Columbia.
- QE and co-counsel recently obtained a complete defense verdict for Colgate following a jury trial in Kentucky. QE previously tried three cases to jury verdict in Los Angeles, and we obtained complete defense verdicts in all three of those cases as well. After each verdict, the jurors have credited the strength and credibility of the defense experts, and Quinn Emanuel’s cross-examinations that exposed the analytical gaps in Plaintiff’s theories of product defect and causation.
- We are national counsel and trial counsel for Forest Laboratories, LLC, a subsidiary of Allergan, in cases filed in state and federal courts around the country in which plaintiffs claim that their ingestion during pregnancy of Celexa® or Lexapro®—prescription antidepressants sold by Forest—allegedly caused various birth defects in their children. We also represent the company in litigations in which plaintiffs allege Lexapro ingested during pregnancy causes autism.
- We represent Express Scripts in a lawsuit by Plaintiff the State of Alaska on October 12, 2023, alleging public nuisance, unfair trade, and RICO claims relating to the adjudication and dispensing of opioids in Alaska. The State claims that Express Scripts colluded with opioid manufacturers to flood the State with opioids causing it financial harm. We obtained a favorable pre-emption ruling at the motion to dismiss stage, dismissing the aspects of the State’s claims that implicated Medicare Part D. Our motion to dismiss the State’s RICO claim was granted-in-part, and the parties are beginning fact discovery on the State’s remaining claims.
- We also represent Express Scripts in a lawsuit by Plaintiff the City of Atlanta and six metro-Atlanta counties against Express Scripts and other pharmacy benefit managers for public nuisance relating to the manufacturing, marketing, sale, prescription, and dispensing of opioids. Plaintiffs claim that Express Scripts colluded with opioid manufacturers to flood the city of Atlanta and its surrounding counties with opioids causing them financial harm. In August 2023, Plaintiffs voluntarily dismissed the action.
- We represent Express Scripts as lead counsel in the In re: National Prescription Opiate Multi-District Litigation (“MDL”) pending in the Northern District of Ohio, which is one of the largest and longest running products liability MDLs in the country. Hundreds of cities and counties from across the country have filed (or propose to file) public nuisance, RICO, and related claims against Express Scripts alleging it contributed to an alleged oversupply of prescription opioids nationwide through its administration of pharmacy benefits as a Pharmacy Benefit Manager and through its dispensing of prescription opioids as a mail order pharmacy. These cases represent the latest wave of MDL opioids lawsuits after billions of dollars in settlements by opioids manufacturers, distributors, and pharmacies.
- We are actively defending Express Scripts in two bellwether case – the City of Rochester, New York and the City of Ogdensburg, New York. Both cases are in discovery in the Northern District of Ohio and are heading towards potential trial dates in 2027.
- We successfully obtained the withdrawal of three other bellwether cases—Lincoln County, Missouri, City of Independence, Missouri, and Webb County, Texas—after discovering widespread document retention and spoliation issues by the plaintiffs.
- We also represent Express Scripts as lead counsel in multiple lawsuits filed by State Attorneys General across the country pursuing similar public nuisance, RICO, and other claims against Express Scripts to those at issue in the MDL. We are actively defending lawsuits filed by the Attorneys General of Alaska, Arkansas, California, Hawaii, Kentucky, Michigan, Mississippi, Nevada, New MEdixo, Utah, and West Virginia. Each of these cases are proceeding individually in courts across the country with the earliest trial date set for August 2026.
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