Substantive Law

Toxic Torts

Substantive Law Committees serve as a sounding board for members with a subspecialty or a strong interest in an area of law. In Northern California, there are a large group of defense lawyers who have some or many cases involving exposure to a toxin of one kind or another. The cases typically have legal and factual similarities, including the use of experts from the fields of Industrial Hygiene and Epidemiology, legal issues of multiple causation, and factual issues relating to latency of injury. The Toxic Torts Substantive Law Committee, formed in January 2003, seeks to address problems common to practitioners in this area of law.

One common example for Bay Area firms is the asbestos litigation. In San Francisco County alone there are typically three asbestos trials proceeding at any one time, and in Alameda County there is usually one courtroom with an asbestos personal injury trial. Often plaintiffs serve more than one hundred defendants, and there are some three hundred local firms which are centrally or peripherally involved in this litigation. Lawyers defending asbestos cases are in one of two groups: those whose firm does substantially or primarily asbestos litigation, and those whose firm has only one or a handful of such cases. We hope that this committee will speak to the needs of both groups.

There exist good national organizations which address asbestos practice, but their seminars are often far away and expensive, and do not focus on elements of local practice. This committee is a place to share issues of interest to the Northern California asbestos defense community, through meetings, postings and focused educational courses provided locally. This committee also serves as a forum to discuss the usefulness of coordinated defense approaches to the local litigation, something which has been done consistently by plaintiff firms, but has been lacking on the defense side.

Lawyers with other Toxic Tort claims will use the committee in the same way. The large coordinated litigation such as asbestos, breast implant and silica, and the individual claims such as exposures to pesticides, mercury and benzene all have elements in common, to be shared through both meetings and educational courses. This is a new committee, and members who join this year will be able to influence the scope and direction of its activities.

For further information, contact:

Christopher W. Wood (Chair)
McKenna Long & Aldridge
101 California St., 41st Floor
San Francisco, CA 94111
(415) 267-4000 – phone/(415) 267-4198 – fax
cwood@mckennalong.com

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