Shookhardy Bak

3 26

===

NO MERRI

CLIMATE LAWSUIT OUR CHILDREN TRUST

promoted to primary 6/14 bigtime links with lec on 2 comms

money launder junk food co at harvard to stare and whelan, helped PM with early tort reform scam

enstrom, entine

chem pharma tobacco tort class action

TOXIC TORT?

MASTER TOBACCO SETTLEMENT?

SLAPP 3 OFFENSE

==

entine7 23

With almost no oversight, transparency, or regulation, financing tort cases is almost a no-lose proposition. Big wins, like the glyphosate cases, are referred to in the industry as “nuclear verdicts”. Philip Goldberg, managing partner of Shook, Hardy and Bacon PHARMA TOBACCO]  in Washington calls MTLFs a “contrived mass tort generation machine”.Fake studies “manufactured for the litigation” and marketing tie-ins with partner organizations such as environmental groups fuel the litigation, he wrote recently in Bloomberg Law:

Courts have found the overwhelming number of these claims are meritless. They are manufactured to feed a business model that takes advantage of imbalance, inefficiencies, and transaction costs of the civil justice system. Claims are produced by lead generator(s) and filed by lawyers, often without vetting. … But there is no way for the courts to try all cases. For many companies, the only way out is to settle en masse—even when claims have no factual or legal basis.

SwissRe says this influx of capital fueling class actions is overwhelming the court system and generating so many plaintiffs that corroborating claims has become nearly impossible. A recent report by the Madison County Record identified one case with more than 600 examples of falsified statements, false advertising, claimants filing for damages without having a disease, and litigator-submitted affidavits from people who had died before the dated signatures.

Goldberg calls the predatort industry a form of mass terrorism.Right or wrong the corporations have no exit. The plaintiff lawyers bank that the claims will go unexamined and swept into a global settlement, said Judge Clay Land of the US District Court in Georgia, one of the first jurists to recognize what’s been happening. That “allows them to obtain a recovery without the individual merit of their case being scrutinized.”

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https://www.motherjones.com/environment**/2022/03**/environmentalist-lawyer-fighting-protect-big-oil-litigation-astroturf-phil-goldberg-map/

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in the spring of 2019, Phil Goldberg, a lawyer and hired gun for a front organization serving some of America’s most powerful oil firms, spotted an opportunity to serve his masters.

The University of Hawaii was holding a conference about a wave of lawsuits against the oil industry, and Goldberg was alarmed the event failed to include representatives from the energy business. So the day before the symposium, he fired off an email to the university demanding that big oil be heard alongside its critics.

The event was to interrogate the oil industry’s decades-long cover-up involving the climate crisis. But a one-sided debate, Goldberg wrote, “does students and the general public a significant disservice.” He insisted the meeting be postponed.

Denise Antolini, associate dean at the university’s law school who organized the conference, said in her 23-year-career as a law professor, she had never received such demands. “Your request to disrupt our public event was quite surprising, especially coming from far across the continent, from someone I’ve never heard of, on behalf of a private client with an apparently direct financial interest in chilling debate about climate litigation,” she replied.

The conference went ahead, but Goldberg chalked up his intervention as a win. He had managed to pressure Antolini into reciting his objections to the conference in her opening statement. He also convinced the university to post his blogs on its website alongside a letter published by the Honolulu Star-Advertiser denouncing the meeting for daring to suggest there was a solid legal case against the oil companies.

Goldberg is part of a network of enablers working to preserve big oil’s power and reputation as it faces a barrage of litigation. More than two dozen cities, states and municipalities allege the industry lied to Americans for decades by downplaying and outright denying that fossil fuels caused climate change. The lawsuits demand companies use some of their vast profits to help pay for the human toll of the climate crisis, including the damage brought by rising seas and increasingly severe weather disasters.

Big Oil “has this ability to really take command of the societal narrative on a whole level that the tobacco industry just didn’t.”

Desperate to avoid costly settlements, the fossil fuel industry relies on front organizations to discredit the litigation and sway public opinion in its favor. So nearly three years ago, the friends of big oil turned to Goldberg, a former Democratic congressional aide and self-described “committed environmentalist,” HIPPIE CHICK to persuade Americans that the companies responsible for the growing climate disaster are now the ones to fix the problem.

Though Goldberg heads an ostensibly independent initiative called the Manufacturers Accountability Project, much of its funding comes from some of the biggest names in the oil business. MAP hired Goldberg to push back against litigation on the fossil fuel industry’s behalf,allowing oil companies to keep their hands clean in the process.

Goldberg is leading a charge in local media to discredit those suing the fossil fuel industry as a “fringe litigation movement” conspiracy of opportunistic politicians, environmental extremists, and money-grasping lawyers who pose a threat to the American way of life. // ENTINE

“There are two goals of this litigation—drive climate policy and wage a public relations campaign against the energy industry,” Goldberg told the Guardian. “It has no foundation legally and, more to the point, is not the right way to fight climate change.” LOMBORGIAN

Karen Sokol, a law professor at Loyola University who specializes in climate litigation, likens the strategy to that pursued by the tobacco industry when it faced litigation over what it knew about cigarettes causing lung cancer. But, she said, the strategy may prove more successful for big oil.

“The fossil fuel industry has this ability to really take command of the societal narrative on a whole level that the tobacco industry just didn’t because, although we were definitely a cigarette culture for a time, not everybody was so dependent on cigarettes in the same way we are on fossil fuels,” she said.

Kert Davies, founder and director of Climate Investigations Center, is scathing about Goldberg’s part in that. “Phil Goldberg is a useful pawn on a much larger chessboard. If he doesn’t know that, it’s a shame,” Davies said. “If he does know his role, it’s worse.”

Outwardly, Goldberg seems an unusual bearer of the torch to snuff out climate lawsuits. The New Jersey-born lawyer characterizes himself as a “progressive, pro-environmentalist” with a long commitment to Democratic causes. With that, he has positioned himself as a voice of reason as he leads the fossil fuel industry’s campaign to distract Americans from the scene of the crime and embrace big oil as a necessity in the struggle to contain global heating.

But Goldberg is also a former coal lobbyist now working as an attorney for a Kansas City law firm—Shook, Hardy and Bacon—that made its name decades ago as the cigarette industry’s attack dog. The legal practice even gained public notoriety for inspiring the fictional law firm of Smoot, Hawking in the satirical book turned film, Thank You for Smoking.

“What a sad and disquieting chapter in the history of an honorable and often courageous profession.”

Shook, Hardy pioneered a strategy toward avoiding corporate accountability—a denial strategy the oil companies followed not many years later. Starting in the mid-80s, the firm convinced cigarette companies to shut down research into the dangers of nicotine, warning it could be used against them in court. It also hired specialists with advanced scientific degrees to cast doubt on the evidence that smoking causes lung cancer. The firm’s lawyers soon developed a reputation for probing the lives of people who dared to sue the tobacco firms and for using court procedure to draw out cases until plaintiffs ran out of funds.

All of this so disgusted one federaljudge, Gladys Kessler, that in a damning 2006 civil judgment against the cigarette makers she said Shook, Hardy and other firms played “an absolutely central role in the creation and perpetuation” of a 50-year campaign of deceit.

“They devised and coordinated both national and international strategy; they directed scientists as to what research they should and should not undertake; they vetted scientific research papers and reports as well as public relations materials to ensure that the interests of the (tobacco industry) would be protected,” she wrote. “What a sad and disquieting chapter in the history of an honorable and often courageous profession.”

The chapter cemented Shook, Hardy’s reputation for vigorously defending clients and drew other contentious industries to the firm. And since joining Shook, Hardy in 2003, Goldberg has lived up to its reputation for playing hardball.

Throughout his career, Goldberg has developed an expertise at combatting public accountability lawsuits on the behalf of many embattled corporate clients, includingcoal companies, the asbestos industry, and pharmaceutical companies accused of medical malpractice.

Goldberg has also advised the American Legislative Exchange Council on drafting laws to make it harder to sue big corporations.

Simultaneously over the last two decades, he has led a wing of the Democratic think tank, the Progressive Policy Institute, that works to protect corporations from lawsuits and to keep regulatory changes in the hands of politicians who can be influenced by industry money and lobbyists. Goldberg has also advised the right-wing American Legislative Exchange Council on drafting laws to make it harder to sue big corporations.

Goldberg’s current defense of the fossil-fuel industry is equally focused.He deflects questions about Big Oil’s cover-up of its own scientific research on global heating by claiming that raking over the past is not going to help find solutions to the climate crisis. He also avoids answering questions about parallels with the tobacco industry’s actions.

Instead, Goldberg has sought to nurture a progressive image with claims to be dedicated to the climate fight but concerned that suing oil companies is getting in the way of solutions. He goes out of his way to say that he “cares deeply about climate change” and, in his answers, returns repeatedly to “the important work that needs to be done on the climate.”

This image was carried through to the Guardian‘s photographs for this article, which Goldberg agreed to pose for only while riding his bicycle. He declined to remove his helmet for any of the pictures.

Today, Goldberg is at the face of a PR campaign to squash climate litigation against Big Oil. He calls his strategy the “iron triangle defense.” One side of the triangle is dedicated toward shaping the public narrative, the second is for pressuring legislatures to write laws that discourage corporate accountability litigation, and the third side influences the judicial process with amicus briefs in cases that might have a bearing on those lawsuits.

A key part of the iron triangle strategy is that its beneficiaries should not be seen as the ones who are pulling the strings. Corporations fighting legal battles learned long ago that Americans are not particularly trustful of executives in suits. So major industries seek to influence public opinion and political action by funding front organizations to work on the behalf of corporate interests, but under a different name.

It was an obvious move for the fossil-fuel industry to turn toward front groups as it grew increasingly alarmed in recent years at a surge in lawsuits demanding compensation for damage caused by the climate crisis. Oil executives feared a repeat of the tobacco industry’s fate when public opinion turned sharply against the cigarette makers, forcing the largest civil settlement in US history.

“Say a new locality files a suit … Suddenly the local press is infiltrated with Goldberg quotes. He fires out op-eds.”

Major oil firms, including Exxon, Shell and Chevron, looked to the National Association of Manufacturers, one of the US’s most powerful business lobby groups, with a long history of creating front organizations at the behest of various industries, to help“combat frivolous, politically motivated lawsuitsagainst energy manufacturers.”

Four years ago, NAM launched a group, the Manufacturers Accountability Project, to take the campaign in defense of big oil on to the streets and into the local media. A year later, it recruited Goldberg to lead the initiative. While much of their strategy is an attempt to intimidate litigants through the legal process, Goldberg’s role is to take the fight to local communities in an attempt to mold public opinion—and potential jurors—before the cases come to court.

From local newspapers to NPR, Goldberg pushes arguments designed to deflect from the fossil fuel industry’s responsibility for the climate crisis. “Those of us who care deeply about climate change, our economy, and our way of life must focus our elected leaders on game-changing innovations, not these politically-driven litigations,” he wrote in the New Jersey Globe after three New Jersey senators pressed the state to sue Big Oil to pay up for the costs caused by their deceptions.

Goldberg has pursued similar lines after the attorneys general of Vermont and Connecticut filed cases against the oil industry. “We should be fighting climate change instead of each other,” he reasoned in the local press.

Sokol, the law professor and climate litigation specialist, said she saw Goldberg’s intervention tactics everywhere there is a lawsuit against the fossil fuel industry. “Say a new locality files a suit… Suddenly the local press is infiltrated with Goldberg quotes. He fires out op-eds,” she said. “It’s a concerted battle against this litigation, which in many ways is a testament to how powerful the industry suspects this could be if it’s allowed to have its day in court.”

Still, even in Goldberg’s home state, there are plenty who are not buying it. In 2020, three New Jersey state senators pressed the state to sue Big Oil to pay up for the past and present costs caused by their deceptions.

“Rather than alert the public and help usher in the transition to clean energy, big oil took a page out of big tobacco’s playbook and funded and led a decades-long campaign to lie, deceive, and confuse the public about the science of climate change,” two of the senators, one Democrat and one Republican, wrote in USA Today. “It’s only fair that these fossil fuel companies who got rich while igniting the climate crisis are made to pay their fair share of the costs to our communities.”

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https://www.climatedocket.com/**2019/02/**26/national-association-manufacturers-oil-climate-liability/

 Karen Savage

In its fight to stave off a wave of climate change-related lawsuits, the fossil fuel industry has found a vocal and unapologetic ally in the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM). The 123-year old trade group represents a wide range of the nation’s manufacturing companies, but it has frequently gone to bat for select segments of its membership during major liability battles. Currently, it is Big Oil’s staunchest defender.

The group has filed briefs defending oil companies in liability lawsuits, launched campaigns to discredit the communities filing them, and has worked to stop shareholders from pressing the oil companies to disclose climate risks. In these roles, NAM has put itself front and center in the effort to keep fossil fuel companies from being held liable for their role in climate change, and from paying for the related damages that will run in the hundreds of billions of dollars to communities across the country.

“Taxpayer resources should not be used for baseless lawsuits that are designed to enrich trial lawyers and grab headlines for politicians,” Lindsey de la Torre, executive director of NAM’s spinoff group, the Manufacturers’ Accountability Project (MAP), said in a statement after Rhode Island filed one of the climate liability lawsuits last year. NAM launched MAP in 2017 as a response to the increasing number of climate liability suits.

Those suits, according to NAM, are a result of a coordinated campaign by activists “to disparage U.S. manufacturers with a focus on America’s largest energy manufacturers.”

MAP is now attempting to convince the American public—as well as judges who might hear those liability cases—that attempts to hold companies accountable for their role in climate change will harm business, said Richard Daynard, president of Northeastern University Law School’sPublic Health Advocacy Institute and chair of its Tobacco Products Liability Project.

“This is essentially the PR front for the defendants in climate litigation,” Daynard said, adding that MAP is also working to discourage municipalities from filing future suits.

“This is all part of a long history of tort reform propaganda,” he said, adding that NAM has worked for decades to reign in all types of liability litigation, including against the tobacco industry.

So perhaps it’s not surprising that NAM’s defense of fossil fuel companies has begun to look increasingly like its support for the tobacco industry in the 1980s. Similar tactics were used when tobacco companies were facing hundreds of lawsuits and were charged with racketeering by the federal government for deceiving the public about the catastrophic health hazards of smoking. NAM has even hired the same law firm that defended the tobacco industry to launch an assault on the climate liability lawsuits.

NAM recently named Phil Goldberg, a former coal lobbyist as special counsel for MAP. Goldberg is a managing partner in the Washington office of Shook, Hardy & Bacon, which gained notoriety for defending the tobacco industry, and is the co-chair of the firm’s  public policy group.

Some say Shook, Hardy & Bacon went beyond defending tobacco companies, actively coordinating efforts by its clients to deliberately deceive the public about the ruinous health effects of smoking.

Judge Gladys Kessler, of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, who found 10 tobacco companies guilty of violating racketeering laws in 2006, said the company’s lawyers “played an absolute central role in the creation and perpetuation” of the companies’ “fraudulent schemes,” calling it a “sad and disquieting chapter” in the legal profession.

Even before Goldberg was hired, MAP had launched an offensive against climate suits, filing friend-of-the-court briefs and intervening in a landmark constitutional suit brought by 21 young people against the U.S. government. MAP has also submitted public recordsrequests and coordinated apublic relationscampaign todiscredit the municipalities behind the liability lawsuits.

Sharon Eubanks, a former Department of Justice lawyer who led the government’s racketeering case against the tobacco industry, said MAP is launching a direct attack on climate litigation suits.

“It’s very similar what they’re doing, only the tobacco industry at least didn’t come right out and say ‘We’re going to target these lawsuits directly,’” Eubanks said. “They did so indirectly. But NAM and MAP, they’re like, ‘We’re targeting the lawsuits.’”

Michael Barnett, a professor of management & global business at Rutgers Business School who has studied trade associations, said groups like NAM exist to defend the interests of their industry.

“It’s sort of an outsourced arm of those firms, rather than doing it all on their own, there’s strength in numbers,” Barnett said.“There’s some efficiency to having one centralized legal defense that attacks on behalf of the whole industry in addition to each of the individual firms taking on these issues.”

No Stranger to the Liability Battlefield

The addition of Goldberg to MAP’s legal team indicates a continuing commitment to defending NAM’s fossil fuel defendants. In addition to being the go-to law firm for tobacco companies,Shook, Hardy & Bacon has a long history with NAM, partnering as far back as 2007 to support firms facing product liability suits. The firm worked so closely with the tobacco industry to attack the science showing the dangers of smoking it was named in several cases along with their clients, charging them with deceiving the public by fraudulently concealing the health effects of smoking.Oklahoma’s attorney general called Shook, Hardy & Bacon an “aider and abettor” of fraud in one suit.

“[The Department of Justice] considered suing them and making them defendants because they were so much a part of the RICO violations we alleged,” Eubanks said.

“They’re not even hiding from anything, they’re just saying ‘we want to influence what’s happening in these cases the best way that we can.’”

She said she’s seen no evidence that MAP’s tactics are illegal, but they are similar to some of what was alleged in the tobacco cases.

Goldberg did not respond to a request for comment. In a NAM press release he said, “The NAM and its Manufacturers’ Accountability Project are the tip of the spear in the fight against the wave of unfounded public nuisance lawsuits targeting America’s manufacturers.”

Goldberg said climate liability suits get in the way of finding real solutions and “are more about politics than addressing the global challenge of climate change.” He did not elaborate on what the solutions are or how municipalities will pay for the infrastructure needed to protect their residents, costs that are projected to run into the hundreds of billions of dollars nationwide.

A History of Advocating for Fossil Fuel Members

NAM, which was founded in 1895, describes itself as the largest manufacturing association in the United States. It doesn’t publicly disclose its membership list, but its board includes some of the oil and gas industry’s most powerful executives.

Exxon senior vice president and management committee member Neil Chapman joined NAM’s executive committee in 2015, taking over the position vacated by current Exxon chief executive Darren Woods. Chapman, who donated $10,000 to NAM’s political action committee during the 2018 election cycle, also serves as NAM’s southwest regional vice chair.  

Chapman and Exxon did not respond to a request for comment.

For decades, the association has promoted climate denial, founding the Global Climate Coalition in 1989 and sharing offices until 1992 while the Global Climate Coalition and its members—primarily energy companies and automobile manufacturers—worked to cast doubt on what was fast becoming overwhelming scientific evidence that the burning of fossil fuels drives climate change. The goal was to change the public’s perception and cast doubt on climate science.

The Global Climate Coalition was disbanded in 2002 after several of its largest corporate members pulled out under public pressure to accept that climate change—and the projected catastrophic effects—was an undeniable global threat.

More recently, NAM’s focus has shifted from promoting climate deception to defending member companies from efforts to hold them accountable for years of deceiving the public and damaging the climate.

Along with the American Petroleum Institute and American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers, NAM in 2015 joined the landmark youth climate lawsuitJuliana v. United States as an intervenor on side of the federal government.

Calling the suit a “direct threat to businesses,” the trade associations said the “significant reduction in [greenhouse gas] emissions would cause a significant negative effect on [their] members by constraining the sale of the product they have specialized in developing and selling.” When the court asked intervenors to explain their views on climate change, NAM quickly backed out.

When the liability lawsuits began—and now total more than a dozen from communities across the country and one state (Rhode Island)—NAM responded by launching MAPto “set the record straight and highlight foundations and other activists who have sought to undermine and weaken manufacturing in the United States” by engaging in climate change-related litigation.

MAP came out swinging, claiming that then-New York attorney general Eric Schneiderman’s use of the Martin Act to investigate Exxon for possible climate change-related fraud was “politically motivated.” It demanded New York Mayor Bill de Blasio apologize to New Yorkers for using an outside firm to file its suit against five major oil companies and launched a campaign to highlight what it called de Blasio’s “politically-motivated attacks on manufacturers.”

Eubanks said that rhetoric doesn’t add up.

“Lawsuits are to enforce the law, to ensure that people are following the law and it takes you out of a political process and puts you before a neutral person, a judge,” she said, adding that Shook, Hardy & Bacon also does a good bit of political lobbying.

“They say, ‘We think these matters should be handled by legislation, not litigation, and by regulations that will come out of any statutes that are enacted,” she said. “Then they fight real hard to make sure there are no statutes that come down the pike because regulations come out of regulatory authority, so it sounds real good, but that’s wholly inconsistent with their approach.”

NAM and MAP have made a big deal out of the potential for future RICO charges against the fossil fuel industry—the same racketeering laws that ultimately ensnared the tobacco industry—and contend that a conspiracy is being waged on the other side by a “group of politically motivated activists” who are “trying to take down America’s energy manufacturers.”

“Right now, there are groups of trial lawyers slinking around the country tantalizing elected officials in cities and states with unrealistic promises of jackpot justice if they will only agree to sue energy manufacturers over climate change,” saidNAM president and chief executive Jay Timmons in NAM’s State of Manufacturing Address last week in Houston. “These lawyers—they want to get rich at the expense of manufacturing workers.”

Daynard said this type of messaging is used in an effort to control the narrative around— and media coverage of—climate litigation.

“They have this notion that if they can get continue to get news coverage and establish themselves, they can make sure when cases are filed journalists will look go to them and they can then get in some comment on how this is all worthless crazy stuff stirred up by ‘greedy lawyers’ or ‘ideologically driven NGO’s,’” Daynard said.

To try and substantiate its view that litigation is part of a vast conspiracy—and in what some say is an attempt to have a chilling effect on municipalities that file lawsuits—MAP has also submitted extensive public record requests to plaintiffs in the suits, seeking documents and communication between the municipalities and their attorneys, prior records requests that include those attorneys, certain communication regarding the defendant companies and communication between the municipalities and billionaire Tom Steyer, founder of NextGen, a progressive organization working to stem the risks of climate change for future generations.

When Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Kilmartin filed the first state-level suit last July, MAP denounced it.

Eubanks said ensuring manufacturers abide by state law is exactly what attorneys general should do.

“We have consumer protection statutes, we have consumer protection agencies, that’s part of what makes this country great,” Eubanks said. “You can’t just come in and roll over people with deceptive and unfair methods of competition, you can’t just lie about things without consequences and we have organizations to protect that. That’s what I find so alarming about this—the whole idea that there’s something wrong with enforcing the law.”

NAM did not respond to a request for comment. De la Torre, could not be reached for comment.

Perhaps NAM’s biggest attack on liability suits thus far has been its accusations against several California municipalities.

Not long after the suits were filed, Exxon went on the offensive, accusing plaintiffs of failing to disclose climate risks to their bond investors.

To try to bolster that allegation, NAM—along with the industry ally Competitive Enterprise Institute—asked the Securities and Exchange Commission to investigate whether several cities and counties that filed climate suits misled investors when they stated in bond offerings that they couldn’t predict the impacts of climate change.

A report by the former chief of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s municipal bonds division later found the municipalities did not mislead potential investors.

In another instance, NAM partnered with the Chamber of Commerce to back Exxon, filing a friend-of-the-court brief in the oil giant’s quest to stop investigations by the attorneys general of Massachusetts and New York.

New York has since filed a lawsuit against Exxon based on that investigation, alleging the oil giant for years deceived investors by deliberately downplaying the climate risks to its business and long-term financial health. The Supreme Court recently ruled against Exxon’s attempt to stop Massachusetts’ investigation, which now continues.

This is the first in a series of articles on the trade group coordinating opposition to climate liability suits.

This story has been update to more accurately describe the review which found California municipalities did not mislead potential investors.

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https://www.desmogblog.com/2019/02/27/oil-manufacturers-accountability-project-trade-group-climate-suits

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Battling for Big Oil: Manufacturing Trade Group Leads Assault on Climate Suits

Read time: 12 mins

By Guest • Wednesday, February 27, 2019 - 11:09

By Karen Savage, Climate Liability News. Crossposted from Climate Liability News.

In its fight to stave off a wave of climate change-related lawsuits, the fossil fuel industry has found a vocal and unapologetic ally in the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM).The 123-year old trade group represents a wide range of the nation’s manufacturing companies, but it has frequently gone to bat for select segments of its membership during major liability battles. Currently, it is Big Oil’s staunchest defender.

The group has filed briefs defending oil companies in liability lawsuits, launched campaigns to discredit the communities filing them, and has worked to stop shareholders from pressing the oil companies to disclose climate risks. In these roles, NAM has put itself front and center in the effort to keep fossil fuel companies from being held liable for their role in climate change, and from paying for the related damages that will run in the hundreds of billions of dollars to communities across the country.

“Taxpayer resources should not be used for baseless lawsuits that are designed to enrich trial lawyers and grab headlines for politicians,” Lindsey de la Torre, executive director of NAM’s spinoff group, theManufacturers’ Accountability Project (MAP), said in a statement after Rhode Island filed one of the climate liability lawsuits last year. NAM launched MAP in 2017 as a response to the increasing number of climate liability suits.

Those suits, according to NAM, are a result of a coordinated campaign by activists “to disparage U.S. manufacturers with a focus on America’s largest energy manufacturers.”

MAP is now attempting to convince the American public — as well as judges who might hear those liability cases — that attempts to hold companies accountable for their role in climate change will harm business, said Richard Daynard, president of Northeastern University Law School’s Public Health Advocacy Institute and chair of its Tobacco Products Liability Project.

Manufacturers' Accountability Project logo

The Manufacturers' Accountability Project (MAP) was launched in November 2017 to push back against climate-change-related lawsuits affecting the manufacturing industry. ]

“This is essentially the PR front for the defendants in climate litigation,” Daynard said, adding that MAP is also working to discourage municipalities from filing future suits.

“This is all part of a long history of tort reformpropaganda,” he said, adding that NAM has worked for decades to reign in all types of liability litigation, including against the tobacco industry.

So perhaps it’s not surprising that NAM’s defense of fossil fuel companies has begun to look increasingly like its support for the tobacco industry in the 1980s. Similar tactics were used when tobacco companies were facing hundreds of lawsuits and were charged with racketeering by the federal government for deceiving the public about the catastrophic health hazards of smoking. NAM has even hired the same law firm that defended the tobacco industry to launch an assault on the climate liability lawsuits.

NAM recently named Phil Goldberg, a former coal lobbyist as special counsel for MAP. Goldberg is a managing partner in the Washington office of Shook, Hardy & Bacon, which gained notoriety for defending the tobacco industry, and is the co-chair of the firm’s  public policy group.

Some say Shook, Hardy & Bacon went beyond defending tobacco companies, actively coordinating efforts by its clients to deliberately deceive the public about the ruinous health effects of smoking.

Judge Gladys Kessler, of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, who found 10 tobacco companies guilty of violating racketeering laws in 2006, said the company’s lawyers “played an absolute central role in the creation and perpetuation” of the companies’ “fraudulent schemes,” calling it a “sad and disquieting chapter” in the legal profession.

Even before Goldberg was hired, MAP had launched an offensive against climate suits, filing friend-of-the-court briefs and intervening in a landmark constitutional suit brought by 21 young peopleagainst the U.S. government. MAP has also submitted public records requests and coordinated a public relations campaign to discredit the municipalities behind the liability lawsuits.

Sharon Eubanks, a former Department of Justice lawyer who led the government’s racketeering case against the tobacco industry, said MAP is launching a direct attack on climate litigation suits.

“It’s very similar what they’re doing, only the tobacco industry at least didn’t come right out and say ‘We’re going to target these lawsuits directly,’” Eubanks said. “They did so indirectly. But NAM and MAP, they’re like, ‘We’re targeting the lawsuits.’”

Michael Barnett, a professor of management & global business at Rutgers Business School who has studied trade associations, said groups like NAM exist to defend the interests of their industry.

“It’s sort of an outsourced arm of those firms, rather than doing it all on their own, there’s strength in numbers,” Barnett said. “There’s some efficiency to having one centralized legal defense that attacks on behalf of the whole industry in addition to each of the individual firms taking on these issues.”

No Stranger to the Liability Battlefield

The addition of Goldberg to MAP’s legal team indicates a continuing commitment to defending NAM’s fossil fuel defendants. In addition to being the go-to law firm for tobacco companies, Shook, Hardy & Bacon has a long history with NAM, partnering as far back as 2007 to support firms facing product liability suits. The firm worked so closelywith the tobacco industry to attack the science showing the dangers of smoking it was named in several cases along with their clients, charging them with deceiving the public by fraudulently concealing the health effects of smoking. Oklahoma’s attorney general called Shook, Hardy & Bacon an “aider and abettor” of fraud in one suit.

“[The Department of Justice] considered suing them and making them defendants because they were so much a part of the RICO violations we alleged,” Eubanks said.

“They’re not even hiding from anything, they’re just saying ‘we want to influence what’s happening in these cases the best way that we can.’”

She said she’s seen no evidence that MAP’s tactics are illegal, but they are similar to some of what was alleged in the tobacco cases.

Goldberg did not respond to a request for comment. In a NAM press release he said, “The NAM and its Manufacturers’ Accountability Project are the tip of the spear in the fight against the wave of unfounded public nuisance lawsuits targeting America’s manufacturers.”

Goldberg said climate liability suits get in the way of finding real solutions and “are more about politics than addressing the global challenge of climate change.” He did not elaborate on what the solutions are or how municipalities will pay for the infrastructure needed to protect their residents, costs that are projected to run into the hundreds of billions of dollars nationwide.

A History of Advocating for Fossil Fuel Members

NAM, which was founded in 1895, describes itself as the largest manufacturing association in the United States. It doesn’t publicly disclose its membership list, but its board includes some of the oil and gas industry’s most powerful executives.

Exxon senior vice president and management committee member Neil Chapman joined NAM’s executive committee in 2015, taking over the position vacated by current Exxon chief executive Darren Woods. Chapman, who donated $10,000 to NAM’s political action committee during the 2018 election cycle, also serves as NAM’s southwest regional vice chair.  

Chapman and Exxon did not respond to a request for comment.

For decades, the association has promoted climate denial, founding the Global Climate Coalition in 1989 and sharing offices until 1992 while the Global Climate Coalition and its members — primarily energy companies and automobile manufacturers — worked to cast doubt on what was fast becoming overwhelming scientific evidence that the burning of fossil fuels drives climate change. The goal was to change the public’s perception and cast doubt on climate science.

The Global Climate Coalition was disbanded in 2002 after several of its largest corporate members pulled out under public pressure to accept that climate change — and the projected catastrophic effects — was an undeniable global threat.

More recently, NAM’s focus has shifted from promoting climate deception to defending member companies from efforts to hold them accountable for years of deceiving the public and damaging the climate.

Along with the American Petroleum Institute and American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers, NAM in 2015 joined the landmark youth climate lawsuit Juliana v. United States as an intervenor on the side of the federal government. 

Calling the suit a “direct threat to businesses,” the trade associations said the “significant reduction in [greenhouse gas] emissions would cause a significant negative effect on [their] members by constraining the sale of the product they have specialized in developing and selling.” When the court asked intervenors to explain their views on climate change, NAM quickly backed out.

When the liability lawsuits began — and now total more than a dozen from communities across the country and one state (Rhode Island) — NAM responded by launching MAP to “set the record straight and highlight foundations and other activists who have sought to undermine and weaken manufacturing in the United States” by engaging in climate change-related litigation.

MAP came out swinging, claiming that then-New York attorney general Eric Schneiderman’s use of the Martin Act to investigate Exxon for possible climate change-related fraud was “politically motivated.” It demanded New York Mayor Bill de Blasio apologize to New Yorkers for using an outside firm to file its suit against five major oil companies and launched a campaign to highlight what it called de Blasio’s “politically-motivated attacks on manufacturers.”

Eubanks said that rhetoric doesn’t add up.

“Lawsuits are to enforce the law, to ensure that people are following the law and it takes you out of a political process and puts you before a neutral person, a judge,” she said, adding that Shook, Hardy & Bacon also does a good bit of political lobbying.

“They say, ‘We think these matters should be handled by legislation, not litigation, and by regulations that will come out of any statutes that are enacted,” she said. “Then they fight real hard to make sure there are no statutes that come down the pike because regulations come out of regulatory authority, so it sounds real good, but that’s wholly inconsistent with their approach.”

NAM and MAP have made a big deal out of the potential for future RICO charges against the fossil fuel industry— the same racketeering laws that ultimately ensnared the tobacco industry — and contend that a conspiracy is being waged on the other side by a “group of politically motivated activists” who are “trying to take down America’s energy manufacturers.”

“Right now, there are groups of trial lawyers slinking around the country tantalizing elected officials in cities and states with unrealistic promises of jackpot justice if they will only agree to sue energy manufacturers over climate change,” said NAM president and chief executive Jay Timmons in NAM’s State of Manufacturing Address last week in Houston. “These lawyers — they want to get rich at the expense of manufacturing workers.”

Daynard said this type of messaging is used in an effort to control the narrative around — and media coverage of — climate litigation.

“They have this notion that if they can get continue to get news coverage and establish themselves, they can make sure when cases are filed journalists will look, go to them and they can then get in some comment on how this is all worthless crazy stuff stirred up by ‘greedy lawyers’ or ‘ideologically driven NGO’s,’” Daynard said.

To try and substantiate its view that litigation is part of a vast conspiracy — and in what some say is an attempt to have a chilling effect on municipalities that file lawsuits — MAP has also submitted extensive public record requests to plaintiffs in the suits, seeking documents and communication between the municipalities and their attorneys, prior records requests that include those attorneys, certain communication regarding the defendant companies and communication between the municipalities and billionaire Tom Steyer, founder of NextGen, a progressive organization working to stem the risks of climate change for future generations.

When Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Kilmartin filed the first state-level suit last July, MAP denounced it.

Eubanks said ensuring manufacturers abide by state law is exactly what attorneys general should do.

“We have consumer protection statutes, we have consumer protection agencies, that’s part of what makes this country great,” Eubanks said. “You can’t just come in and roll over people with deceptive and unfair methods of competition, you can’t just lie about things without consequences and we have organizations to protect that. That’s what I find so alarming about this — the whole idea that there’s something wrong with enforcing the law.”

NAM did not respond to a request for comment. De la Torre could not be reached for comment.

Perhaps NAM’s biggest attack on liability suits thus far has been its accusations against several California municipalities.

Not long after the suits were filed, Exxon went on the offensive,accusing plaintiffs of failing to disclose climate risks to their bond investors. 

To try to bolster that allegation, NAM — along with the industry ally Competitive Enterprise Institute — asked the Securities and Exchange Commission to investigate whether several cities and counties that filed climate suits misled investors when they stated in bond offerings that they couldn’t predict the impacts of climate change.

A report by the former chief of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s municipal bonds division later found the municipalities did not mislead potential investors.

In another instance, NAM partnered with the Chamber of Commerce to back Exxon, filing a friend-of-the-court brief in the oil giant’s quest to stop investigations by the attorneys general of Massachusetts and New York.

New York has since filed a lawsuit against Exxon based on that investigation, alleging the oil giant for years deceived investors by deliberately downplaying the climate risks to its business and long-term financial health. The Supreme Court recently ruled against Exxon’s attempt to stop Massachusetts’ investigation, which now continues.

This is the first in a series of articles on the trade group coordinating opposition to climate liability suits.

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https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2018/06/19/alec-deadly-asbestos-agenda-benefits-koch-industries

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) named Missouri Republican state Rep. Bruce DeGroot as a “Legislator of the Week” in June.

Why is ALEC so fond of DeGroot? Because he has cheerfully championed ALEC legislation to restrict the right of terminally ill, asbestos victims to sue over mesothelioma. In doing so, DeGroot is helping the many U.S. companies, including ALEC funders Koch Industries and Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company, that have asbestos-related liability.

NATIONWIDE, NOT ON YOUR SIDE

Mesothelioma is an aggressive type of lung cancer caused by exposure to asbestos. Even though the dangers of deadly asbestos have been known for over 100 years, industry worked hard to bury evidence that workers were being harmed by asbestos exposure. Three thousand people are diagnosed each year with mesothelioma in the United States and most die within a year or two. Most victims are public servants, veterans, firefighters, even teachers exposed to asbestos in schools.

In addition to being an ALEC politician, Degroot is an attorney for an insurance defense firm, Brown & James, which represents dozens of insurers who, in turn, have as clients companies responsible for mesothelioma-related claims. One of the firm’s clients is Nationwide. Sources tell the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) that Nationwide was actively pushing the bill in Missouri, although it was not publicly listed as a supporter of the bill.

In many states, a legislator who introduced a bill benefitting his firm’s clients could face ethics charges or worse. In Missouri, “it is unseemly, to say the least, and one of the reasons we need ethics reform in this state,” said deputy director Sharon Geuea Jones of the Missouri Association of Trial Lawyers.

Nationwide has long been a corporate sponsor of ALEC. In 2014 and 2015, for example, Nationwide incurred asbestos-related losses of $148 million and $98 million respectively, giving it one of the largest asbestos liabilities of any insurer for those years, according to Casualty Actuaries of Greater New York.

ALEC PROTECTIONS FOR ASBESTOS COMPANIES

At ALEC, corporate lobbyists and politicians vote as equals behind closed doors on “model” bills that advance corporate interests over consumers’ interests. DeGroot’s bill, HB 1645 or “The Asbestos Transparency Act,” bears a striking similarity to ALEC’s “Asbestos Claims Transparency Act.” The Missouri House passed the bill in March, but the Senate has yet to take action.

The bill would force victims of asbestos to search out bankrupt companies that made asbestos, not just companies still in business. The problem for the injured is that many companies that made asbestos or had asbestos products have sought bankruptcy protection and are now in trusts. These trusts are more difficult to sue, their assets are harder to determine, and the victims often die before their case is heard. The bill would also limit the time victims have to bring a case after diagnosis, even though it takes more time to prepare for a suit against bankrupt companies.

DeGroot can’t say enough about how awesome ALEC’s cookie-cutter corporate legislation is. “ALEC and ALEC model policy are a great resource. ALEC was able to put me in touch with an expert who was willing to travel to Missouri to testify in support of one of the bills I filed, Asbestos Transparency Trust,” DeGroot said in an ALEC interview.

That “expert” was Mark Behrens, a partner of the Kansas City law firm Shook, Hardy & Bacon.The firm has a national reputation for representing deadly industries like Big Tobacco. Behrens travels around the country lobbying on behalf of ALEC’s many asbestos bills, but tells the public that he is representing other clients like the U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform.

EMOTIONAL FLOOR DEBATE

A cheerful DeGroot opened floor debate saying inaccurately that the bill simply stopped “double dipping” by asbestos victims, but the issue quickly turned emotional.

The first legislator to speak was Republican Rep. Steve Cookson, who is suffering from liver cancer. “I have been up here for eight years and most bills that we talk about are about protecting somebody’s money.… This bill is designed to protect out of state companies and insurance companies.”

Cookson went on to say that in the past he had been supportive of some tort reform bills. “I reflect back now, and you know I have a personal situation going on right here. I think a lot more about life and death. I would ask you, did you ever contemplate the way you want to die?” he asked of DeGroot.

“Well that is a bit personal,” responded DeGroot with a nervous laugh.

“Well, so do you want to die a slow death where you lay there in the bed and suffocate to death?” asked Cookson.

“I wouldn’t like that, no,” said Degroot.

Cookson went on to say that for the time he had left in the legislature, he wanted to make sure he was on the side of those “laying in the hospital for a long long time suffering, surrounded by their families…. I can’t bring myself to be in support of anything that would compromise a person’s ability to be made whole, and their family to be made whole because they had to leave this world in a horrible fashion in an abbreviated time they would have been expected to live.”

The ALEC bill offered by DeGroot would mean that many victims would not live to see their day in court. As one opposing legislator, Rep. Jay Barnes explained, “the best evidence in an asbestos case is the plaintiff, and when they die, that goes away.”

Similar bills based on the ALEC model have passed in 15 states: Ohio, Oklahoma, Wisconsin, West Virginia, Arizona, Texas, Utah, Tennessee, South Dakota, North Dakota, Iowa, Mississippi, Michigan, Kansas, and North Carolina.

KOCH INDUSTRIES LIMITS ITS EXPOSURE TO MESOTHELIOMA LAWSUITS

Koch Industries is the largest privately held company in America, with multiple subsidiary firms. When Koch acquired the paper company Georgia-Pacific LLC in 2007, it also became responsible for Bestwall LLC, which up until 1977 made a joint compound that contained asbestos. And because mesothelioma symptoms only appear after 10 to 50 years, Koch knew that when it purchased Georgia-Pacific, it also became responsible for thousands of asbestos lawsuits.

Koch Industries is a big financial supporter of ALEC and has served on the ALEC private enterprise board for many years, including in 2007 when the ALEC board approved the Asbestos Claims Transparency Act. Subsequently, in 2017, Koch Industries put Bestwall into bankruptcy to limit its exposure to mesothelioma lawsuits.

An affiliate of Koch’s Georgia-Pacific, Bestwall, joined “scores of U.S. manufacturers that have filed for bankruptcy due to asbestos litigation, and comes as the U.S. Congress mulls a bill that plaintiffs’ lawyers say would discourage asbestos claims,” wrote Reuters. The misnamed FACT Act is supported by ALEC, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and companies with billions of dollars of liability for asbestos claims, including Koch Industries.

Koch now argues that Bestwall was only a minor user of asbestos, but construction workers were exposed to multiple sources of asbestos, and since many of the responsible parties no longer exist, victims’ lawyers are forced to sue more than one company.

Koch complains it is spending $160 million a year defending its subsidiary against asbestos lawsuits. It could have set up a trust fund from the beginning when it acquired Bestwall to pay victims with that money instead of fighting every lawsuit, and is now slowing the process by putting the company into bankruptcy.

Americans for Tax Fairness estimates that the Kochs will get $1.4 billion from the Jobs and Tax Cut Act of 2017, money that could be used to pay asbestos victims before they die.

Instead, Koch and its allies are working hard to pass laws that run out the clock.

==

==

• Victor Schwartz - Partner at the Washington D.C. offices of Shook, Hardy & Bacon, LLP -- a law and lobbying firm that has represented big tobacco companies such as Philip Morris (now Altria Group),^[11] big pharmaceutical companies such as Bristol-Myers Squibb and GlaxoSmithKline,^[12] and big technology companies such as Sprint Nextel,^[13] Microsoft^[14] and Sony.^[15] He has been very active in the arena of tort reform and has been called "the undisputed king of tort reform."^[16] and considered one of Washington, D.C.'s 50 top lobbyists;^[17] Formerly a lawyer and lobbyist at Crowell & Moring for 21 years; Director of the Federal Insurance Administration from 1978-1980, and a professor and dean at the University of Cincinnati College of Law.^[18]

===

Shook, Hardy and Bacon (SHB) is a law firm based in Kansas City, Missouri. It also has offices in Geneva, Houston, London, Miami, Orange County, CA, San Francisco, Tampa and Washington D.C. For decades, the firm has represented the nation’s largest tobacco companies.^[1]

American Legislative Exchange Council and “Tort Reform”

Shook, Hardy and Bacon has long been tied to the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). Its partners have served on the Civil Justice Task Force and have been at the forefront of the "tort reform" movement.

...ABOUT ALEC]

A partner at the Shook, Hardy & Bacon Washington D.C. offices and a chair of the law firm's Public Policy Group, Victor Schwartz, sits on the ALEC Board of Scholars.^[2] He is a long-time co-chair of ALEC’s Civil Justice Task Force, as of 2011. ^[3] Schwartz has been called the "undisputed king of tort reform" (an issue promoted in ALEC model bills that are approved by the Civil Justice Task Force).^[4] He also is affiliated with the American Tort Reform Association (ATRA) and theWashington Legal Foundation. In 2007, Schwartz was called one of Washington, D.C.'s 50 top lobbyists.^[5]

Mark Behrens, also an SHB partner, ias an Advisor to ALEC's Civil Justice Task Force as of 2011.^[6] Another partner, Phil Goldberg, is also an Advisor to ALEC's Civil Justice Task Force as of 2011.^[7]

Shook, Hardy and Bacon clients and ALEC priorities

According to the American Association for Justice, Shook, Hardy and Bacon has:

“played a pivotal role in the tobacco industry’s campaign to ward off litigation over smoking-related illnesses. In one memorable memo, the law firm’s attorneys advised Phillip Morris to stop testing the effects of nicotine, saying “the performing and publishing of nicotine related research clearly seems ill-advised from a litigation point of view. Not coincidentally, ALEC was heavily involved in the tobacco fight, pushing for restrictions on tobacco litigation and attacking pension funds that dared to divest in tobacco companies, while being compensated to the tune of $200,000 for its work. Similarly, when Shook, Hardy and bacon began representing the pharmaceutical industry, ALEC was suddenly every drug manufacturer’s best friend.”

^[8]

SHB Lobbying and ALEC

In 2009, Shook, Hardy and Bacon attorneys Mark Behrens and Corey Schaecher traveled to North Dakota to speak with legislators and their staff about ALEC’s asbestos bill, the Innocent Successor Liability Act, without registering as lobbyists. After days of interacting with elected officials, the “North Decoder” blog revealed their lobbying activities on January 23, 2009; within hours, ALEC submitted letters of authorization permitting Behrens and Schaecher to lobby on their behalf, the same day the corporation most likely to benefit from the legislation, Crown, Cork, and Seal, also registered the two as lobbyists. According to the National Institute on Money in State Politics, this is the only instance in which ALEC has ever registered to lobby in any state.^[9]

As a 501(c)(3), ALEC is not permitted to participate in lobbying activities.In its 2009 IRS Form 990, in response to the question “Did the organization participate in lobbying activities” (page 3 question 4), ALEC replied “no.”^[10][11]

Clients

Clients of Shook, Hardy & Bacon LLP have included, but are not limited to:

• Philip Morris, now Altria Group (also involved in ALEC)^[12]
• Eli Lily and Company^[13]
• Amgen^[13]
• Bristol-Myers Squibb^[13]
• GlaxoSmithKline (also involved in ALEC)^[13]
• Sanofi-Aventis^[13]
• Guidant and Wyeth^[13]
• Sprint Nextel^[14] and
• Microsoft^[15]
• Sony^[16]
• Hewlett-Packard^[17]

As of May 2010, clients included:

• American Home Products Corporation
• Applebee’s International, Inc.
• Aventis Pharmaceuticals Inc.
• Bank of America, N.A.
• Barkley Evergreen & Partners, Inc.
• Big Twelve Athletic Conference
• British-American Tobacco Company, Ltd.
• Business Men’s Assurance Company of America
• Capstar Broadcasting Corporation
• Cargill, Inc.;
• Conoco Inc.
• Crititech, Inc.
• Deutsche Financial Services Corporation
• Dodson Group
• E.I du Pont de Nemours and Company
• Electric Energy, Inc.
• Eli Lilly and Company
• Farmland Industries, Inc.
• Farmland Insurance Company
• Farmland National Beef Packing, L.P.
• First Union Corporation
• Ford Motor Company
• Fort Dodge Laboratories
• G.D. Searle & Company
• GTE Corporation
• Helzberg Diamonds
• HNTB Corporation
• Interstate Bakeries Corporation wonder bread andf twinkes?
• IPC International Corporation
• Kansas City Royals Baseball Corporation
• Kraft Foods, Inc. (also involved in ALEC)
• La Petite Academy, Inc.
• Lorillard Tobacco Company
• Metricom, Inc.
• Miller Brewing Company
• Motorola, Inc.
• Nucentrix Broadband Networks, Inc.
• Orion Refi ning Corporation
• Pharmacia Corp.
• Philip Morris Companies Inc.
• Phillips Petroleum Company
• PJM Interconnection L.L.C.
• ProQuest Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
• Sanofi -Synthelabo Inc.
• Seaboard Corporation
• Sears
• Roebuck and Co.
• Smith & Wesson Corporation
• St. John’s Health System, Inc.
• Tamko Roofi ng Products, Inc.
• The Oz Entertainment Company
• Tomkins Industries, Inc.
• UMB Bank, N.A.
• Union Pacific Railroad Company
• Vulcan Materials Company
• Warner-Lambert Company
• Wyeth-Ayerst Laboratories Inc.^[18]

Political Contributions and Lobbying

Open Secrets reports that in 2010, Shook, Hardy & Bacon's PAC gave $5,400 to Republicans and $500 to Democrats.

Personnel

• David Kincaid Hardy
• William L. Allinder
• John F. Murphy - Chair
• Gene E. Voigts - Vice Chair
• Alicia J. Donahue - Managing Partner
• Michelle R. Mangrum - Managing Partner
• Daniel F. Molony - Managing Partner
• Frank C. Rothrock - Managing Partner
• Samuel B. Sebree II - Managing Partner
• James Shepherd - Managing Partner
• Lea A. Souza-Rasile - Managing Partner

Contact Details

Website: http://www.shb.com

Articles and resources

Related SourceWatch articles

• Tobacco industry

External Articles

• "Philip Morris ETS Billing Categories -- Summary", December 1, 1990. Bates No: 2023590213-2023590299. This Philip Morris document is a bill from its law firm Shook, Hardy and Bacon of Kansas City. Lawyers describe by name "developed witnesses", or scientists willing to testify publicly on each topic affecting the company (87 pages total, scroll down).

References

1. ↑ See, e.g., Shook, Hardy and Bacon LLP, Comments on Testimony of Dora Anne Mills, MD, MPH, Director, Maine Bureau of Health, document in Tobacco Library, March 12, 1999
2. ↑ Shook, Hardy & Bacon LLP Victor E. Schwartz, lawfirm biography, accessed June 6, 2011
3. ↑ American Legislative Exchange Council, Civil Justice Task Force, organization website, accessed May 26, 2011
4. ↑ Terry Carter Piecemeal Tort Reform, ABA Journal, December 2001
5. ↑ Kim Eisler Hired Guns: The City's 50 Top Lobbyists, Washingtonian, June 1, 2007
6. ↑ American Legislative Exchange Council, Inside ALEC Jan. 2011, organizational newsletter, January 2011
7. ↑ American Legislative Exchange Council Inside ALEC Feb. 2011, organization newsletter, February 2011
8. ↑ American Association for Justice Ghostwriting the Law for Corporate America, May, 2010
9. ↑ National Institute on Money in State Politics, ALEC Lobbyist Client Results, accessed July 4, 2011.
10. ↑ ALEC Lied on its 2009 Tax Return, Northdecoder.com blog, Mar 28, 2011, accessed July 7, 2011.
11. ↑ American Legislative Exchange Council, 2009 Form 990, Internal Revenue Service filing, July 15, 2010
12. ↑ Shook, Hardy & Bacon LLP Philip Morris ETS Billing Categories, lawfirm report, December 1990
13. ↑ ^13.0 ^13.1 ^13.2 ^13.3 ^13.4 ^13.5 Mark Hansen Shook Hardy Smokes ‘Em, ABA Journal, October 1, 2008
14. ↑ Bloomberg News Vonage Infringed 6 Patents of Sprint, U.S. Jury Rules, New York Times, September 26, 2007
15. ↑ Steve Vockrodt Microsoft uploads Shook Hardy & Bacon to its law firm short list, Kansas City Business Journal, July 9, 2009
16. ↑ Shook, Hardy & Bacon LLP, "Eric A. Buresh, Partner, law firm biography, accessed June 25, 2011
17. ↑ David Yates, "HP lawyers take class certification question to appeals court," The Southeast Texas Record, September 25, 2007
18. ↑ American Association for Justice ALEC: Ghostwriting the Law for Corporate America, issue report, May 2010

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from sw alec

ALEC Task Forces

ALEC model legislation is introduced in, and initially approved by, one of nine “task forces,” which are chaired by both elected officials and “private sector” corporate members. ^[22] ALEC corportions are often represented by their lobbyists on ALEC’s board or task forces, and their representatives discuss and vote on legislation with legislators.^[23] For example, according to the American Association for Justice, in the area of “tort reform” legislation, “the nuts and bolts of . . . crafting legislation is done by large corporate defense firm Shook, Hardy & Bacon,” which has defended tobacco companies and other corporations against lawsuits.^[24] The law firm’s partner, Victor Schwartz is a long-time co-chair of ALEC’s "civil justice" task force.  

The task forces as of 2011 are: ^[25]

• Civil Justice Task Force;
• Commerce, Insurance and Economic Development Task Force;
• Education Task Force;
• Energy, Environment and Agriculture Task Force;
• Health and Human Services Task Force;
• International Relations Task Force;
• Public Safety and Elections Task Force;
• Tax and Fiscal Policy Task Force; and
• Telecommunications and Information Technology Task Force.^[26]

The ALEC corporate and politician boards of directors meet jointly annually at a meeting that constitutes the final say over the bills and other matters for the organization. (ALEC says corporations do not vote at that meeting.^[27])

Secrecy and Lobbying

Under ALEC’s published by-laws, legislators who are ALEC “state chairmen” have a “duty” to get the model bills introduced in their state legislatures.^[28]  However, when ALEC legislation is introduced in state houses, it is under the name of the sponsoring legislator rather than ALEC itself, with no mention that the bill was pre-voted on by corporations through ALEC or even connecting the bill to ALEC.  The task forces obscure how “corporations [get] access and influence for which they'd otherwise be publicly scrutinized." ^[29]

NPR reported that "much about ALEC is private. It does not disclose how it spends it money or who gives it to them. ALEC rarely grants interviews. [Senior Director of Policy Michael] Bowman won't even say which legislators are members. Is it lobbying when private corporations pay money to sit in a room with state lawmakers to draft legislation that they then introduce back home? Bowman, a former lobbyist, says, "No, because we're not advocating any positions. We don't tell members to take these bills. We just expose best practices. All we're really doing is developing policies that are in model bill form." ^[30]

The American Prospect quoted "someone familiar with the organization" of ALEC as saying, "The totality of what they do is lobby. It's a self-sustaining con game." ALEC, however, denied the charge. ALEC’s then spokesman Bob Adams (who now runs and is the only employee of the front group “League of American Voters” CHECK) insisted, "We don't lobby... We don't introduce legislation at the state level. We just don't do that."^[31]

In 2009, however, reporters discovered that Shook, Hardy and Bacon attorneys Mark Behrens and Corey Schaecher traveled to North Dakota to speak with legislators and their staff about ALEC’s asbestos bill, called the “Innocent Successor Liability Act,” without registering as lobbyists. At least three days after Schaecher was known to have been lobbying legislators, the ALEC asbestos liability bill was introduce on January 15 as HB 1430.  The “North Decoder” blog revealed their lobbying activities on January 23, 2009; within hours, ALEC submitted letters of authorization permitting Behrens and Schaecher to lobby on their behalf, the same day the corporation most likely to benefit the legislation, Crown, Cork, and Seal, also registered the two as lobbyists. On January 27, Behrens testified before the North Dakota House Judiciary Committee in support of the legislation, and the following day, ALEC threw a party for legislators so they could “learn more about America’s premier legislative organization.” ^[32] According to the National Institute on Money in State Politics, this is the only instance in which ALEC has ever registered to lobby in any state. ^[33]  In its 2009 IRS Form 990, in response to the question “Did the organization participate in lobbying activities” (page 3 question 4), ALEC replied “no.” ^[34]

Phil Goldberg is a lobbyist at Shook, Hardy and Bacon, as well as an advisor to the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).^[1][2][3]

Ties to American Legislative Exchange Council

Goldberg is an advisor to the ALEC Civil Justice Task Force, which generates the ALEC “tort reform” model legislation. In the March, 2011 issue of “Inside ALEC,” Goldberg wrote an article titled “State-Sponsored Global Warming Litigation is Weighing Down on American Business.”

Other Shook, Hardy & Bacon lobbyists and attorneys are also tied to ALEC, and the American Association for Justice has suggested the firm lobbies for the organization (visit the Shook, Hardy & Bacon page for more information). ^[4]

Many of Shook Hardy & Bacon’s lobbying clients are also ALEC corporate members, including a variety of pharmaceutical companies (Eli Lilly and Company, Pharmaceutical Researchers and Manucaturers of America [PhRMA]) and historically, tobacco companies. ^[5]

"Corporate Democrat-For-Hire"

AlterNet, in a 2006 article, described Goldberg as among the top ten "Corporate Democrats For-Hire."^[6]

According to AlterNet profile:

"Say hi to Phil Goldberg of the firm of Shook, Hardy and Bacon. Goldberg served as an aide to several Democratic members of Congress. Before coming to Shook Hardy, he headed the litigation communications section of D.C. public relations firm Ketchum (run by former GOP House star Susan Molinari, it's the outfit that channeled $240,000 from the Bush Administration to Armstrong Williams, the prominent African-American radio and television personality, for his support for the president's No Child Left Behind project).

Promotional materials say that Goldberg 'educates the public and other important audiences of client issues. Through his work, Phil has become an emerging voice in the moderate wing of the Democratic Party. Goldberg personally represents the National Restaurant Association (objectives include making it more difficult to sue over obesity-related issues and opposition to consumer group efforts for greater truth in labeling). Firm clients have included the Pharmaceutical Research & Manufacturers (on medical malpractice liability and opposing class actions); Animal Health Institute (on limiting pet medicine manufacturers' liability for animal health); Philip Morris/Altria (limiting liability in class-action suits); Coalition for Litigation Justice (insurance industry lobby group seeking to limit liability in asbestos and silica cases). The firm was named by the International Who's Who of Business Lawyers 2005 as 'the world's leading firm for product liability defense expertise.'"

^[7]

Goldberg is also a former staffer of former California DemocraticU.S. Rep. Ellen Tauscher,^[8] who now works for the U.S. State Department. ^[9]

---

Victor E. Schwartz has been called "the undisputed king of tort reform."^[1] He is a partner at the Washington D.C. offices of Shook, Hardy & Bacon LLP, and chairs the law firm's Public Policy Group.^[2] In 2007, he was considered one of Washington, D.C.'s 50 top lobbyists.^[3] A casebook he co-authors, Prosser, Wade and Schwartz Torts, is the most widely used torts casebooks in the United States.^[4]

He is also the author of Comparative Negligence and the Guide to Multistate Litigation.^[5][6]

Schwartz is a member of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). Schwartz is listed on ALEC's Board of Scholars and is co-chair of its Civil Justice Task Force as of 2011. He also previously won the "Jeffersonian Award," ALEC's highest award to private sector members. He has been involved with ALEC for several years.

He is also on the General Counsel to the American Tort Reform Association.^[7]

Career

Victor Schwartz has worked to "integrate litigation, government affairs and public relations" in Shook, Hardy & Bacon's D.C. law firm since 2001.^[8] In 2011, he lobbied on behalf of Peabody Energy, Eli Lily & Co., and The U.S. Chamber of Commerce.^[9][10] A 2007 ABA Journalarticle also identified him as a lobbyist for the Animal Health Institute in 2005^[11] and a Public Citizen report listed him as a lobbyist for the General Aviation Manufacturers Association and the Product Liability Coordinating Committee, in 1997.^[12]

Other clients of Shook, Hardy & Bacon include, but are not limited to:

• Philip Morris, now Altria Group^[13]
• Amgen^[9]
• Bristol-Myers Squibb^[9]
• GlaxoSmithKline^[9]
• Sanofi-Aventis^[9]
• Guidant and Wyeth^[9]
• Sprint Nextel^[14] and
• Microsoft^[15]

Schwartz is also on the Board of Directors of the Searle Civil Justice Institute at George Mason University School of Law.

Before working at Shook, Hardy & Bacon LLP, Schwartz worked as a lawyer at Crowell & Moring for 21 years.^[16] He was Director of the Federal Insurance Administration from 1978-1980 and was a professor and dean at the University of Cincinnati College of Law.^[17]According to the U.S. Senate Office of Public Records, he was registered as a lobbyist with Crowell & Moring in at least 1999-2001.^[18] He also served as chair of the Federal Inter-Agency Task Force on Product Liability at the Department of Commerce, and the Federal Inter-Agency Council on Insurance under the Ford and Carter Administrations.^[19] He was the principal author of the Uniform Product Liability Act and the Federal Risk Retention Act.^[20]

Articles and resources

Related SourceWatch articles

• Tort reform
• Tobacco industry
• Pharmaceutical industry
• American Legislative Exchange Council

External Articles

References

1. Jump up↑ Terry Carter Piecemeal Tort Reform, ABA Journal, December 2001
2. Jump up↑ Shook, Hardy & Bacon LLP Victor E. Schwartz, lawfirm biography, accessed June 6, 2011
3. Jump up↑ Kim Eisler Hired Guns: The City's 50 Top Lobbyists, Washingtonian, June 1, 2007
4. Jump up↑ American Legislative Exchange Council, 2011 Annual Meeting Leadership Listing, conference brochure on file with CMD, August 11, 2011
5. Jump up↑ "Comparative Negligence." Lexis Nexis. LexisNexis.com. Accessed Aug. 17, 2011.
6. Jump up↑ "Guide to Multistate Litigation." Amazon. Amazon.com. Accessed Aug. 17, 2011.
7. Jump up↑ Victor Schwartz, Hot Coffee the Movie. HotCoffeeTheMovie.com. Accessed Aug. 17, 2011.
8. Jump up↑ Center for Responsive Politics Victor Schwartz, OpenSecrets.org, accessed June 2011
9. ↑ ^Jump ^up ^to:9.0^ ^{9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4} ^9.5 Mark Hansen Shook Hardy Smokes ‘Em, ABA Journal, October 1, 2008
10. Jump up↑ Center for Responsive Politics Lobbying: Shook, Hardy & Bacon, OpenSecrets.org, accessed June 24, 2011
11. Jump up↑ Terry Carter Beast Practices: High-profile cases are putting plenty of bite into the lively field of animal law, ABA Journal, November 2007
12. Jump up↑ Public Citizen The General Aviation Act: When it Comes to Product Liability, Don't Believe What They Claim, online report, accessed June 1, 2011
13. Jump up↑ Shook, Hardy & Bacon LLP Philip Morris ETS Billing Categories, lawfirm report, December 1990
14. Jump up↑ Bloomberg News Vonage Infringed 6 Patents of Sprint, U.S. Jury Rules, New York Times, September 26, 2007
15. Jump up↑ Steve Vockrodt Microsoft uploads Shook Hardy & Bacon to its law firm short list, Kansas City Business Journal, July 9, 2009
16. Jump up↑ Terry Carter Piecemeal Tort Reform, ABA Journal, December 2001
17. Jump up↑ Victor Schwartz work history, OpenSecrets.org
18. Jump up↑ U.S. Senate Office of Public Records, Lobbying Disclosure Act Database, Federal lobbyist database, accessed June 25, 2011
19. Jump up↑ Victor Schwartz, Testimony of Mr. Victor Schwartz before the Subcommittee on Administrative Oversight and the Courts of the Senate Judiciary Committee, United States Congress, Regarding S. 1428, "The Commonsense Consumption Act of 2003" United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary, October 16, 2003
20. Jump up↑ Tuesdays with Torts Masters: Victor Schwartz,"TortsProf Blog"

This article may include information from Tobacco Documents Online.

==

bs LI burton award?

Mark Behrensco-chairs Shook, Hardy & Bacon L.L.P.'s Washington, D.C.-based Public Policy Group. For over two decades, Mark has been extensively involved in liability law, defense litigation, civil justice reform, and counseling in the prevention of liability exposure. He is a member of The American Law Institute (ALI) and was recently invited to serve as an Adviser to the ALI's Restatement Third, Torts: Intentional Torts to Persons project. Mark is a Martindale-Hubbell AV Preeminent Rated attorney.

He has served on the adjunct faculty of TheAmerican University’s Washington College of Law. In the fall of 2010, Mark taught Advanced Torts as a Distinguished Visiting Practitioner in Residence atPepperdine University School of Law in California.

Mark has been listed as one of Washington, D.C.’s “top lawyers” byWashingtonian magazine and as a leading product liability defense attorney byWho’s Who Legal: The International Who’s Who of Business Lawyers. He has authored or coauthored over 149 amicus briefs on behalf of national and state business and civil justice organizations in cases before the United States Supreme Court, seven different federal circuit courts of appeal, 30 different state courts of last resort, and seven different state appellate courts. He has also testified before Congress and numerous state legislatures. He has served as an expert witness in trials.

He has published over 50 scholarly articles in leading national journals and law reviews, including the Harvard Journal on Legislation, Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy, and Texas Review of Law & Politics. He is a recipient of a Burton Award for Legal Achievement and received an award from several national organizations for major research contributing to civil justice issues. Mark has been quoted in The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times,and the National Law Journal, and has appeared on radio and television, includingCNBC, MSNBC, Bloomberg, and CNN.

Mark is counsel to the Coalition for Litigation Justice; Adviser to the American Legislative Exchange Council’s Civil Justice Task Force; co-counsel to the American Tort Reform Association; and co-chair of the Tort and Product Liability Subcommittee of the Federalist Society’s Litigation Practice Group. He is also a member of the Washington Legal Foundation’s Legal Policy Advisory Board, NFIB Small Business Legal Center’s Advisory Board, the Product Liability Advisory Council, Inc., Lawyers for Civil Justice, and the Lawyers Committee of the National Center for State Courts.

Mark received his J.D. in 1990 from Vanderbilt University Law School, where he was a member of the Vanderbilt Law Review and received an American Jurisprudence Award for achievement in tort law. He received his B.A. in Economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1987.

Publications

Mark Behrens & Christopher Appel, Torts 101 – Damages for Those Who Might Get Sick Are Nonsensical, Nat’l L.J., Jan. 27, 2014, at 27. View

Victor E. Schwartz & Mark A. Behrens, Asbestos Litigation: The “Endless Search for a Solvent Bystander,” 23 Widener L.J. 59 (2013). View

Mark A. Behrens, Cary Silverman & Christopher E. Appel, Calculating Punitive Damages Ratios With Extracompensatory Attorney Fees And Judgment Interest: A Violation of the United States Supreme Court’s Due Process Jurisprudence?,48 Wake Forest L. Rev. 1295 (2013). View

Mark A. Behrens & Joanna Vassallo, Workers’ Comp Reform Needed in Pennsylvania, Legal Intelligencer (online), Dec. 27, 2013. View

Mark A. Behrens & Virginia Knapp Dorell, New Rules Under Consideration in U.S. to Lessen Costs and Burdens of Litigation, CorporateLiveWire.com, Nov. 20, 2013.View

Mark A. Behrens, Asbestos Litigation , in The New Lawsuit Ecosystem: Trends, Targets and Players (Victor E. Schwartz & Cary Silverman eds., Inst. for Legal Reform 2013). View

Mark A. Behrens et al., 7th Annual Judicial Symposium on Civil Justice Issues: George Mason Judicial Education Program: Edited Transcripts: The Asbestos Litigation Tsunami - Will It Ever End?, 9 J.L. Econ. & Pol'y 489 (2013).

Mark A. Behrens & Cary Silverman, The Baltimore City Circuit Court Should Reject ‘Consolidation III,’ 28:4 Mealey’s Litig. Rep.: Asbestos 1 (Mar. 20, 2013).View

Mark A. Behrens & Cary Silverman, Litigation Tourism in Pennsylvania: Is Venue Reform Needed?, 22 Widener L.J. 29 (2012). View

Mark A. Behrens & Cary Silverman, WV's Resolution for 2013: Lose ‘Judicial Hellhole' Label, The State Journal, Dec. 19, 2012. View

Mark A. Behrens, Editorial, Pa.’s Model for Commonsense Tort Reform, Phila. Inquirer, June 3, 2012, at C5. View

Mark A. Behrens, Philadelphia Tort Litigation: Forum Shopping and Venue Reform, 13 Engage: J. Federalist Soc’y Prac. Groups 55 (July 2012). View

Mark Behrens, Kevin Underhill, Cary Silverman, Erin Sparkuhl & Christine Edwards,Asbestos Litigation “Magnet” Courts Alter Procedures: More Changes on the Horizon, 27:8 Mealey’s Litig. Rep.: Asbestos 1 (May 16, 2012). View

Mark A. Behrens & Cary Silverman, The Constitutional Foundation for Federal Medical Liability Reform, 15 J. Health Care L. & Pol’y 173 (2012). View

Mark A. Behrens & Cary Silverman, State Court Endorses Use of Equitable Power to Reduce Asbestos Suit Double-Dipping, 21:2 Legal Opinion Letter (Wash. Legal Found. Jan. 27, 2012). View

Mark A. Behrens, Pennsylvania Moves Forward With Considering Asbestos Trust Recoveries When Calculating Tort System Awards, 26:15 Mealey’s Litig. Rep.: Asbestos 34 (Sept. 7, 2011). View

Mark A. Behrens, Medical Liability Reform: A Case Study of Mississippi, 118:2 Obstetrics & Gynecology 335 (Aug. 2011). View

Mark A. Behrens & Cary Silverman, Punitive Damages in Asbestos Personal Injury Litigation: The Basis for Deferral Remains Sound, 8 Rutgers J.L. & Pub. Pol’y 50 (2011). View

Mark A. Behrens, The Constitutional Foundation for Federal Medical Liability Reform (Am. Tort Reform Ass’n May 2011). View

Mark A. Behrens & Christopher E. Appel, The Need for Rational Boundaries in Civil Conspiracy Claims, 31 N. Ill. L. Rev. 37 (2010). View

Malcolm Myers, Mark A. Behrens & Cary Silverman, CA Case to Decide Whether the Duty to Warn Covers Hazards Posed by Products of Others, 29:4 L.J. Newsletters Prod. Liab. L. & Strategy 1 (Oct. 2010). View

Mark A. Behrens & Cary Silverman, Report Sheds Light on Parallel World of Asbestos Bankruptcy Trusts, 19:19 Legal Opinion Letter (Wash. Legal Found. Aug. 20, 2010). View

Mark A. Behrens, Asbestos Litigation Screening Challenges: An Update, 26 T.M. Cooley L. Rev. 721 (2009). View

Mark A. Behrens & Corey Schaecher, RAND Institute for Civil Justice Report on the Abuse of Medical Diagnostic Practices in Mass Tort Litigation: Lessons Learned from the "Phantom" Silica Epidemic That May Deter Litigation Screening Abuse, 73 Alb. L. Rev. 521 (2010). View

Mark A. Behrens, Alabama High Court Issues Landmark Drug Pricing Decision,Class Action Watch (Federalist Society for Law & Public Policy Studies), May 2010, at 1. View

Mark A. Behrens, Who Should Decide Tort Law? A Fundamental Issue in the Public Debate Over Civil Justice Reform, in Andrew F. Popper, Materials on Tort Reform (2010). View

Mark A. Behrens & Corey M. Schaecher, RAND Report Highlights Abuse of Medical Diagnostics in Mass Torts, 19:6 Legal Opinion Letter (Wash. Legal Found. Mar. 12, 2010). View

Mark A. Behrens & Cary Silverman, Alabama Supreme Court Rejects Pharmaceutical Pricing "Regulation Through Litigation," 19:1 Legal Opinion Letter (Wash. Legal Found. Jan. 15, 2010). View

Mark Behrens & Phil Goldberg, Editorial, Home of the Asbestos Litigation “Gold Rush?,” Daily J. (San Fran.), Nov. 18, 2009, at 5. View

Mark A. Behrens & Corey Schaecher, RAND Issues Report on Abuse of Medical Diagnostic Practices in Mass Litigation, 10:3 Engage – The J. of the Federalist Society’s Prac. Groups 108 (Oct. 2009). View

Mark A. Behrens & Christopher E. Appel, Denial of Federal Tax Deduction for Punitive Damages Threatens Job Growth, 18:12 Legal Opinion Letter (Wash. Legal Found. June 5, 2009). View

Mark A. Behrens, Gregory L. Fowler & Silvia Kim, Global Litigation Trends - Class Actions, Contingency Fees, and Punitive Damages: Moving Toward the American Civil Law Model?, 17 Mich. St. J. Int’l Law 165 (2009). View

Mark Behrens, What’s New in Asbestos Litigation?, 28 Rev. Litig. 501 (2009).View

Mark A. Behrens & William L. Anderson, The “Any Exposure” Theory: An Unsound Basis for Asbestos Causation and Expert Testimony, 37 Sw. U. L. Rev. 479 (2008). View

Mark A. Behrens & Frank Cruz-Alvarez, Rhode Island Supreme Court Joins Other State Courts in Rejecting Product-Based Public Nuisance Claims, Class Action Watch (Federalist Society for Law & Public Policy Studies), Oct. 2008, at 5. View

Mark A. Behrens & Christopher E. Appel, Seventh Circuit Rejects Effort to Bypass Class Action Fairness Act in Mass Action, 9:16 Class Action Litig. Rep. (BNA) 701 (Aug. 22, 2008). View

Mark A. Behrens & Christopher E. Appel, Second Circuit Upholds Federal Liability Reform Law, 18:12 Legal Opinion Letter (Wash. Legal Found. May 16, 2008). View

Mark A. Behrens & Christopher E. Appel, “Reverse Bifurcation” Approach to Punitive Damages Trials in West Virginia, Class Action Watch (Federalist Society for Law & Public Policy Studies), Mar. 2008, at 7. View

Mark A. Behrens, Book Review, Mass Torts in a World of Settlement (by Richard A. Nagareda), 9:1 Engage – The J. of the Federalist Society’s Prac. Groups 151 (Feb. 2008). View

Mark A. Behrens & Christopher E. Appel, Medical Monitoring in Missouri AfterMeyer Ex Rel. Coplin v. Fluor Corp.: Sound Policy Should be Restored to a Vague and Unsound Directive, 27 St. Louis U. Pub. L. Rev. 135 (2007). View

Mark Behrens & Christopher Appel, New Jersey and Missouri Supreme Courts Reject Lead Paint Public Nuisance Claims, Class Action Watch (Federalist Society for Law & Public Policy Studies), Sept. 2007, at 1. View

Mark A. Behrens, Asbestos and Silica Litigation Reform: Helping the Sick, Curbing Fraud, and Providing Liability Fairness, The State Factor (Am. Legis. Exch. Council Feb. 2007). View

Mark A. Behrens, Fifth Consecutive State High Court Rejects Medical Monitoring,8:1 Engage – The J. of the Federalist Society’s Prac. Groups 131 (Feb. 2007).View

Mark A. Behrens & Christopher E. Appel, Mississippi Supreme Court Rejects Medical Monitoring, 17:3 Legal Backgrounder (Wash. Legal Found. Feb. 9, 2007).View

Mark A. Behrens & Phil Goldberg, The Asbestos Litigation Crisis: The Tide Appears To Be Turning, 12 Conn. Ins. L.J. 477 (2006).

Mark A. Behrens, Michigan Supreme Court Takes Step to Address Asbestos Litigation Problems, State Court Docket Watch (Federalist Society for Law & Public Policy Studies-State Courts Project), Nov. 2006, at 5. View

Mark A. Behrens & Frank Cruz-Alvarez, Premises Owner Liability for Secondhand Asbestos Exposure: The Next Wave?, 7:2 Engage – The J. of the Federalist Society’s Prac. Groups 145 (Oct. 2006). View

Victor E. Schwartz, Mark A. Behrens & Kevin Underhill, Litigation Tourism Hurts Californians, 21:20 Mealey’s Litig. Rep.: Asbestos 41 (Nov. 15, 2006).

Mark A. Behrens & Phil Goldberg, Lawsuit Scandal Reform: Asbestos and Silica Medical Criteria Legislation Needed, Mo. Law. Wkly. (Oct. 9, 2006). View

Mark A. Behrens & Frank Cruz-Alvarez, State-Based Reforms: Making a Difference in Asbestos and Silica Cases, 16:21 Legal Backgrounder (Wash. Legal Found. Aug. 4, 2006), reprinted in 28:22 Andrews Asbestos Litig. Rptr. 12 (Aug. 25, 2006). View

Mark A. Behrens & Cary Silverman, ALEC Model Legislation: Leading the Way to Help Address the Asbestos Litigation Crisis and Discourage Silica Litigation Fraud, 8:2 ALEC Pol’y Forum 4 (Summer 2006). View

Mark A. Behrens, States Address Asbestos Litigation Crisis and Curb Silica Litigation Fraud, Tex. Civ. Justice League J. 5 (Summer 2006). View

Mark A. Behrens & Frank Cruz-Alvarez, A Potential New Frontier in Asbestos Litigation: Premises Owner Liability for “Take Home” Exposure Claims, 21:11 Mealey’s Litig. Rep.: Asbestos 5 (July 5, 2006). View

Mark A. Behrens & Andrew W. Crouse, The Evolving Civil Justice Reform Movement: Procedural Reforms Have Gained Steam, But Critics Still Focus on Arguments of the Past, 31 U. Dayton L. Rev. 173 (2006). View

Victor E. Schwartz, Mark A. Behrens & Andrew W. Crouse, Getting The Sand Out of the Eye of the Law: The Need for a Clear Rule for Sand Suppliers in Texas After Humble Sand & Gravel, Inc. v. Gomez, 37 St. Mary’s L.J. 283 (2006). View

Mark A. Behrens & Cary Silverman, Now Open for Business: The Transformation of Mississippi’s Legal Climate, Miss. C. L. Rev. 393 (2005). View

Mark A. Behrens & Phil Goldberg, In Memoriam: Senior United States District Judge Charles R. Weiner, 20:22 Mealey's Litig. Rep.: Asbestos 24 (Dec. 21, 2005). View

Mark A. Behrens & Andrew W. Crouse, High Courts Reject Premises Liability For Secondhand Asbestos Exposure, 15:25 Legal Backgrounder (Wash. Legal Found. Dec. 16, 2005), reprinted in 28:5 Andrews Asbestos Litig. Rptr. 9 (Dec. 30, 2005).

Mark A. Behrens, State Asbestos and Silica Reform: Past Successes - Future Opportunities?, 20:19 Mealey's Litig. Rep.: Asbestos 29 (Nov. 2, 2005). View

Steven B. Hantler, Mark A. Behrens & Leah Lorber, Is the Crisis in the Civil Justice System Real or Imagined?, 38 Loy. L.A. L. Rev. 1121 (2005). View

Mark A. Behrens & Phil Goldberg, State-Based Medical Criteria For Asbestos Suits Gains Momentum, 15:13 Legal Opinion Letter (Wash. Legal Found. July 1, 2005), reprinted in 27:20 Andrews Asbestos Litig. Rptr. 10 (July 29, 2005), and23:13 Andrews Toxic Torts Litig. Rptr. 11 (Aug. 5, 2005).

Mark A. Behrens & Phil Goldberg, Stopping Asbestos Litigation Abuse, 6:1 Engage – The J. of the Federalist Society’s Prac. Groups 120 (May 2005). View

Mark A. Behrens & Manuel López, Unimpaired Asbestos Dockets: They Are Constitutional, 24 Rev. Litig. 253 (2005). View

Mark A. Behrens, Successor Asbestos-Related Liability Fairness Act, 7:1 ALEC Pol’y Forum 18 (Spring 2005). View

Mark A. Behrens & Phil Goldberg, Asbestos Litigation: Momentum Builds for State-Based Medical Criteria Solutions to Address Filings by the Non-Sick, 20:6 Mealey’s Litig. Rep.: Asbestos 33 (Apr. 13, 2005). View

Mark A. Behrens, Leah Lorber & Cary Silverman, Silica: An Overview of Exposure and Litigation in the United States, 20:2 Mealey's Litig. Rep.: Asbestos 33 (Feb. 21, 2005). View

Victor E. Schwartz, Mark A. Behrens & Phil Goldberg, Defining the Edge of Tort Law in Asbestos Bankruptcies: Addressing Claims Filed by the Non-Sick, 14:1 J. Bankr. L. & Prac. 61 (2005). View

Mark A. Behrens & Phil S. Goldberg, Editorial, Asbestos X-rays: Study Points To Abuse, Nat'l L.J., Nov. 1, 2004, at 19. View

Mark A. Behrens & Andrew W. Crouse, Book Review, Shakedown: How Corporations, Government and Trial Lawyers Abuse the Judicial Process (by Robert A. Levy), 5:2 Engage – The J. of the Federalist Society's Prac. Groups 154 (Oct. 2004). View

Victor E. Schwartz, Mark A. Behrens & Kimberly D. Sandner, Asbestos Litigation in Madison County, Illinois: The Challenge Ahead, 16 Wash. U. J.L. & Pol'y 235 (2004). View

Victor E. Schwartz, Mark A. Behrens & Cary Silverman, New California Law Grants State 75% of Punitive Damages Award, 19:20 Legal Opinion Letter (Wash. Legal Found. Sept. 3, 2004). View

Mark A. Behrens & Phil S. Goldberg, The Asbestos Litigation Crisis in a Nutshell,The State Factor (Am. Legis. Exch. Council July 2004). View

Mark A. Behrens & Philip S. Goldberg, Asbestos Litigation Reform: Where Is It Headed?, 15:1 Products Liability (ABA, Sec. Of Litig., Comm. on Prods. Liab. Litig.), Spring/Summer 2004, at 1. View

Mark A. Behrens & Edward O. Gramling, Improving the Jury System in Kansas: A Call For Jury Patriotism Legislation, 13 Kan. J.L. & Pub. Pol’y 1 (2004). View

Mark A. Behrens & Cary Silverman, Asbestos Litigation Reform in 2004 and Beyond, Columns: Asbestos, Apr. 2004, at 2. View

Mark A. Behrens, Asbestos Litigation Reform in 2004, The Nat’l Forum for Envtl. & Toxic Tort Issues Newsletter, Mar. 2004, at 2.

Mark A. Behrens & Philip S. Goldberg, The Michigan Supreme Court: Will It Help Curb Asbestos Litigation Abuse And Help The Truly Sick?, 18:24 Mealey’s Litig. Rep.: Asbestos 1 (Jan. 21, 2004). View

Victor E. Schwartz, Mark A. Behrens & Rochelle M. Tedesco, Addressing the “Elephantine Mass” of Asbestos Cases: Consolidation Versus Inactive Dockets (Pleural Registries) and Case Management Plans that Defer Claims Filed By the Non-Sick, 31 Pepp. L. Rev. 271 (2004). View

Mark A. Behrens & Cary Silverman, Improving the Jury System in Virginia: Jury Patriotism Legislation is Needed, 11 Geo. Mason L. Rev. 657 (2003). View

Mark A. Behrens & Kimberly D. Sandner, Federal Tax Deduction for Punitive Damage Payments Comes Under Fire, 13:24 Legal Opinion Letter (Wash. Legal Found. Dec. 29, 2003). View

Mark A. Behrens & M. Kevin Underhill, A Call for Jury Patriotism: Why the Jury System Must Be Improved for Californians Called to Serve, 40 Cal. W. L. Rev. 135 (2003). View

Mark A. Behrens & Cary Silverman, Five Ways the Kentucky Legislature Can Improve Jury Service, 42 Brandeis L.J. 1 (2003). View

Victor E. Schwartz, Mark A. Behrens & Rochelle Todesco, Congress Should Act to Resolve the National Asbestos Crisis: The Basis in Law and Public Policy for Meaningful Progress, 44 S. Tex. L. Rev. 839 (2003).

Victor E. Schwartz, Mark A. Behrens & Rochelle M. Tedesco, Selective Due Process: The United States Supreme Court Has Said That Punitive Damages Awards Must Be Reviewed for Excessiveness, But Many Courts Are Failing to Follow The Letter And Spirit of The Law, 82 Or. L. Rev. 33 (2003). View

Victor E. Schwartz, Mark A. Behrens & Cary Silverman, I’ll Take That: Legal and Policy Problems Raised by Statutes That Require Punitive Damages Awards To Be Shared With The State, 68 Mo. L. Rev. 525 (2003). View

K.B. Battaglini, Mark A. Behrens & Cary Silverman, Jury Patriotism: The Jury System Should Be Improved for Texans Called To Serve, 35 St. Mary’s L.J. 117 (2003). View

J. Walter Sinclair, Mark A. Behrens & Cary Silverman, Making Jury Duty a Little Friendlier, 46:10 The Advocate (Idaho State Bar), Oct. 2003, at 23. View

Victor E. Schwartz and Mark A. Behrens, Symposium: Asbestos Litigation Articles, S. Tex. L. Rev. (Fall 2003). View

Victor E. Schwartz, Mark A. Behrens & Cary Silverman, The Jury Patriotism Act: Making Jury Service More Appealing and Rewarding to Citizens, The State Factor (Am. Legis. Exchange Council April 2003). View

Keith T. Borman & Mark A. Behrens, Preserving the Right to a Representative Jury, 4:1 Engage - The J. of the Federalist Society’s Prac. Groups (2003). View

Mark A. Behrens & Rochelle M. Tedesco, Two Forks in the Road of Asbestos Litigation, 18:3 Mealey's Litig. Rep.: Asbestos 35 (Mar. 7, 2003). View

Victor E. Schwartz, Mark A. Behrens & Cary Silverman, Safeguarding the Right to A Representative Jury: The Need for Improved Jury Service Laws, 7:1 Briefly (Nat’l Legal Center for the Pub. Int. Jan. 17, 2003).

Victor E. Schwartz, Mark A. Behrens & Cary Silverman, New Model Law Designed to Improve Jury Service in State Courts, Counsel’s Advisory (Wash. Legal Found. Jan. 17, 2003).

Mark A. Behrens & Cary Silverman, Tort Reform: The Changing Landscape, 4:2 TortSource: A Publication of the Am. Bar Ass’n Tort & Ins. Prac. Sec., Winter 2002, at 1. View

Victor E. Schwartz, Mark A. Behrens, Cary Silverman and Rochelle M. Tedesco,Consumer Protection in the Legal Marketplace: A Legal Consumer's Bill of Rights Is Needed, 15 Loy. Consumer L. Rev. 1 (2002). View

Mark A. Behrens, Some Proposals for Courts Interested in Helping Sick Claimants and Solving Serious Problems in Asbestos Litigation, 54 Baylor L. Rev. 331 (2002). View

Victor E. Schwartz, Mark A. Behrens & Rochelle M. Tedesco, Kentucky High Court Rejects Medical Monitoring Actions, 10:6 Counsel’s Advisory (Wash. Legal Found. Sept. 6, 2002).

Mark A. Behrens & Cary Silverman, High Court Should Send Strong Signal In Asbestos Cases, Columns: Asbestos, June 2002, at 2.

Mark A. Behrens & Cary Silverman, The Case for Adopting Appointive Judicial Selection Systems for State Court Judges, 11 Cornell J.L. & Pub. Pol’y 273 (2002).View

Mark A. Behrens & Rochelle Tedesco, Addressing Regulation Through Litigation: Some Solutions To Government Sponsored Lawsuits, 3 Engage - The J. of the Federalist Society’s Prac. Groups 109 (Apr. 2002). View

Mark A. Behrens, When the Walking Well Sue, Nat’l L.J., Apr. 29, 2002, at A12.View

Mark A. Behrens & Cary Silverman, Promoting Judicial Independence & Public Confidence in the Courts: The Case for Judicial Appointments in Texas, Veritas - A Quarterly J. of Pub. Pol’y in Tex. 27 (Mar. 2002). View

Mark A. Behrens & Richard O. Faulk, The Asbestos Litigation Crisis in a Nutshell,4:1 ALEC Pol'y Forum 46 (Spring 2002). View

Mark A. Behrens & Barry M. Parsons, Responsible Public Policy Demands and End to the Hemorrhaging Effect of Punitive Damages in Asbestos Cases, 6 Tex. Rev. L. & Pol. 137 (2001).

Mark A. Behrens & Monica Parham, Stewardship for the Sick: Preserving Assets For Asbestos Victims Through Inactive Docket Programs, 33 Tex. Tech. L. Rev.1 (2001) (selected by the Texas Tech Law Review’s Board of Editors as the Outstanding Lead Article of the year).

Mark A. Behrens & Phillip R. Anderson, State Supreme Courts Retreat From Medical Monitoring Causes of Action, 10:5 L.J. Newsletters Prod. Liab. L. & Strategy 1 (Nov. 2001).

Mark A. Behrens & Donald Kochan, Protecting the Right to Appellate Review in the New Era of Civil Actions: A Call for Bonding Fairness, 2:17 Class Action Litig. Rep. (BNA) 644 (Sept. 14, 2001), also printed in 29:21 Prod. Safety & Liab. Rptr. (BNA) 515 (May 21, 2001).

Mark A. Behrens & Donald Kochan, Federal Courts Using “Certification” to Punt On Controversial State Tort Law Issues, 14: 8 L.J. Newsletters Prod. Liab. L. & Strategy 4 (Feb. 2001).

Victor E. Schwartz, Mark A. Behrens & Monica Parham, Fostering Mutual Respect and Cooperation Between State Courts and State Legislatures: A Sound Alternative to a Tort Tug of War, 103 W. Va. L. Rev. 1 (2000). View

Mark A. Behrens, The Transportation Recall Enhancement: Accountability, and Documentation (TREAD) Act, Translaw, Fall 2000, at 1.

Victor E. Schwartz, Mark A. Behrens & Leah Lorber, Tort Reform Past, Present And Future: Solving Old Problems And Dealing With “New Style” Litigation, 27 Wm. Mitchell L. Rev. 237 (2000).

Mark A. Behrens & Donald Kochan, Let the Sunshine In: The Need for Open, Competitive Bidding in Government Retention of Private Legal Services, 28:38 Prod. Safety & Liab. Rptr. (BNA) 915 (Oct. 2, 2000).

Victor E. Schwartz, Mark A. Behrens & Leah Lorber, Fair Federal Forums Should Decide Interstate Class Actions, 1:8 Class Action Litig. (BNA) 285 (Aug. 11, 2000).

Victor E. Schwartz, Mark A. Behrens & Leah Lorber, Federal Courts Should Decide Multistate Class Actions: A Call For Federal Class Action Diversity Jurisdiction Reform, 37 Harv. J. on Legis. 483 (2000) (winner, Burton Awards for Legal Achievement for excellence in legal writing).

Victor E. Schwartz, Mark A. Behrens & Joseph P. Mastrosimone, Reining in Punitive Damages “Run Wild”: Proposals for Punitive Damages Reform By Courts and Legislatures, 65 Brook. L. Rev. 1003 (2000).

Victor E. Schwartz & Mark A. Behrens, A Proposal for Federal Product Liability Reform In The New Millennium, 4 Tex. Rev. L. & Pol. 261 (2000).

Mark Behrens, Scott Winkelman & Victor Schwartz, Y2K Law Not Foolproof, Nat’l L.J., Dec. 6, 1999, at A15.

Victor E. Schwartz, Mark A. Behrens, Emma Tubb & Jennifer Groninger,Medical Monitoring – Should Tort Law Say Yes?, 34 Wake Forest L. Rev. 1057 (1999).

Victor E. Schwartz, Mark A. Behrens & Andrew W. Bagley, The Tort Reform Marathon, Fla. Bus. Insight, Sept./Oct. 1999, at 24.

Mark A. Behrens, Reform Consumer Lawsuits, Idaho Statesman, Oct. 9, 1999, at B6.

Victor E. Schwartz & Mark A. Behrens, Judicial Activism In The Civil Justice System: Problems and Solutions, Litig. News (Federalist Soc’y for L. & Pub. Pol’y Stud.), Summer 1999, at 5.

Victor E. Schwartz, Mark A. Behrens & Leavy Mathews III, Federalism and Federal Liability Reform: The United States Constitution Supports Reform,36 Harv. J. on Leg. 269 (1999). View

Victor E. Schwartz, Mark A. Behrens & Leah Lorber, Oregon Tort Reform is Latest Victim of Judicial Nullification, Legal Opinion Letter (Wash. Legal Found. Aug 6, 1999).

Victor E. Schwartz & Mark A. Behrens, Equal Justice Denied If Congress Assists DOJ Quest To Sue Unpopular Defendants, 14:17 Legal Backgrounder (Wash. Legal Found. May 14, 1999).

Mark A. Behrens, Editorial, Courts Are The Wrong Forum for Legislation, Bus. Ins., Apr. 5, 1999, at 8.

Victor E. Schwartz & Mark A. Behrens, Punitive Damages Tax Proposal: A New Weapon for Trial Lawyers, Legal Opinion Letter (Wash. Legal Found. Mar. 19, 1999).

Mark A. Behrens & Christopher J. McGuire, Year 2000 Problems Will Leave Many Wanting to Take a “Byte” Out of Computer and Technology Companies: A Preview of Liability Issues Affecting “Y2K” Litigants, Mealey’s Year 2000 Rep. (Mar. 1998).

Victor E. Schwartz & Mark A. Behrens, Federal Legislation To Limit Punitive Damages, Libel Defense Resource Center Libelletter, Feb. 1998.

Victor E. Schwartz & Mark A. Behrens, Curbs on Class Action Abuses, 8 Australian Prod. Liab. Rptr. 83 (July 1997).

Victor E. Schwartz, Mark A. Behrens & Mark D. Taylor, Should Courts or Legislators Make America’s Tort Law?, in Executive Risk Management Associates,Lawyer to Lawyer, Edition VII, July 1997.

Victor E. Schwartz, Mark A. Behrens & Mark D. Taylor, Illinois Tort Law: A Rich History of Cooperation and Respect Between the Courts and the Legislature, 28 Loy. U. Chi. L.J. 745 (1997).

Victor E. Schwartz & Mark A. Behrens, Federal Product Liability Reform in 1997: History and Public Policy Support Its Enactment Now, 64 Tenn. L. Rev. 595 (1997).

Jerry Phillips, Victor E. Schwartz & Mark A. Behrens, Foreword, 64 Tenn. L. Rev. 557 (1997).

Victor E. Schwartz & Mark A. Behrens, Editorial, Liability “Overkill” Threatens Lives, Wallets, Las Vegas Rev.-J., Mar. 30, 1997, at 1E.

Victor E. Schwartz, Mark A. Behrens & Mark D. Taylor, Stamping Out Tort Reform: State Courts Lack Proper Respect for Legislative Judgments, Legal Times, Feb. 10, 1997, at S34.

Victor E. Schwartz, Mark A. Behrens & Mark D. Taylor, Who Should Make America’s Tort Law: Courts Or Legislators?, Wash. Legal Found. (Feb. 1997).View

Victor E. Schwartz & Mark A. Behrens, An Unhappy Return to Confusion in the Common Law Of Products Liability — Denny v. Ford Motor Company Should Be Overturned, 17 Pace L. Rev. 359 (1997).

Victor E. Schwartz & Mark A. Behrens, The Road To Federal Product Liability Reform, 55 Md. L. Rev. 1363 (1996).

Victor E. Schwartz & Mark A. Behrens, Editorial, Overkill in Liability System Keeps Valuable Products, Services Off the Market, Columbian (Vancouver, WA), Sept. 26, 1996.

Victor E. Schwartz & Mark A. Behrens, Editorial, We Pay Hidden Fees to Some Rich Lawyers, Orange County Register, Sept. 24, 1996.

Victor E. Schwartz & Mark A. Behrens, Editorial, We Should Repeal the “Tort Tax,”Virginian-Pilot (Norfolk, VA), Sept. 23, 1996.

Victor E. Schwartz & Mark A. Behrens, Editorial, “Tort Tax” Repeal Would Help All U.S. Consumers, Houston Chron., Sept. 20, 1996, at 37.

Victor E. Schwartz & Mark A. Behrens, Editorial, The High Cost of Judicial Overkill, J. Comm., Sept. 18, 1996.

Victor E. Schwartz & Mark A. Behrens, Editorial, The “Tort Tax,” Las Vegas Rev.-J., Sept. 18, 1996, at 11B.

Victor E. Schwartz & Mark A. Behrens, Editorial, Tax Reform Must Include “Tort Tax” Which Burdens Business, Consumers, Ariz. Republic (Phoenix), Sept. 18, 1996, a B5.

Victor E. Schwartz & Mark A. Behrens, Editorial, “Tort Tax” Liability Reform Boon To Consumers, Montgomery (Alabama) Advertiser, Sept. 18, 1996, at 21A.

Victor E. Schwartz, Robert Charrow & Mark A. Behrens, Special Report: Law After Medtronic, 15:2 Leader’s Prod. Liab. L. & Strategy 5 (Aug. 1996).

Victor E. Schwartz & Mark A. Behrens, Federal Product Liability Reform Is Consistent With Virginia Law And Should Be Strongly Supported, 4 Geo. Mason L. Rev. 279 (1996).

Mark A. Behrens & Daniel Raddock, Japan’s New Product Liability Law: The Citadel Of Strict Liability Falls, But Access To Recovery Is Limited By Formidable Barriers, 16 U. Pa. J. Int’l Bus. Law 669 (1996).

Victor E. Schwartz, Bob Charrow & Mark A. Behrens, Following the Supreme Court’s Analysis in Cipollone, Courts are Finding Broad Preemption in Sophisticated Medical Device Tort Litigation, 17 J. Prod. & Toxic Liab. 31 (1995).

Victor E. Schwartz, Mark A. Behrens & Lori Bean, Multiple Imposition Of Punitive Damages: The Case For Reform, Critical Legal Issues: Working Paper Series(Wash. Legal Found. Mar. 1995).

Victor E. Schwartz & Mark A. Behrens, Preserving Issues For Appeal Of Punitive Damages Awards, 22:42 Prod. Safety & Liab. Rptr. (BNA) 1122 (Oct. 28, 1994).

Victor E. Schwartz & Mark A. Behrens, Product Liability: Making The Law Work Through Fair and Rational Rules, in State Civil Justice Reform: Future Challenges, Past Successes, 7-15 (Roger Clegg ed. 1994).

Victor E. Schwartz & Mark A. Behrens, Following The Spirit of Haslip: Virginia Should Adopt A “Middle” Burden Of Proof In Punitive Damages Cases, 20 Va. Bar Assn. J. 4 (Winter 1994).

Victor Schwartz & Mark A. Behrens, The American Law Institute’s Reporters’ Study On Enterprise Responsibility For Personal Injury: A Timely Call For Punitive Damages Reform, 30 San Diego L. Rev. 263 (1993).

Victor E. Schwartz & Mark A. Behrens, Punitive Damages Reform — State Legislatures Can And Should Meet The Challenge Issued By The Supreme Court Of The United States in Haslip, 42 Am. U.L. Rev. 1365 (1993).

Victor E. Schwartz & Mark A. Behrens, Supreme Opens Challenges to Excessive Punitive Damages Awards, 7:8 Inside Litig., Aug. 1993, at 13.

Victor E. Schwartz & Mark A. Behrens, Haslip May Alter Tort-Claim Strategies,Nat’l L.J., Feb. 17, 1992, at 23.

Licenses

Mark is admitted to practice in the District of Columbia and Virginia. He also is admitted to practice before the Supreme Court of the United States; the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, Third, Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Circuits; and the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia and the Eastern and Western Districts of Virginia.

Education

1990   J.D., Vanderbilt University School of Law

1987   B.A., University of Wisconsin-Madison

News & Events

• Behrens to Join Panel Discussing the Jury Trial’s Demise 

3/17/2014

• Public Policy Group Co-Chairs Explore Asbestos Litigation Trends 

2/3/2014

• Behrens & Appel Provide NLJ Commentary on Medical Monitoring 

1/29/2014

• New Public Policy Group Law Review Article Addresses Punitive Damages Ratio Calculations 

1/27/2014

• Behrens & Vassallo Call for Workers’ Compensation Reform in Pennsylvania 

12/30/2013

• Behrens & Knapp Dorell Address Proposed Discovery Rule Changes 

12/9/2013

• Schwartz & Silverman Prepare ILR Report on "The New Lawsuit Ecosystem" 

10/23/2013

• Behrens Featured in Published Transcript of Asbestos Symposium Presentation 

7/2/2013

• SHB Named Product Liability Defense Firm of the Year 

6/25/2013

• Behrens Provides Testimony Before ABA Asbestos Task Force 

6/12/2013

• SHB Named Product Liability Defense Firm of the Year 

7/3/2012