Shook, Hardy & Bacon LLP

Product Liability Litigation

Partner

Sam concentrates his practice on advising multinational companies in the defense of product liability litigation outside the United States. With more than 10 years of international litigation experience, he has successfully defended novel and complex litigation in a range of jurisdictions around the world, from those that have well-developed tort law and class action rules to countries that have no previous history of product liability or complex tort litigation. From a foundation that includes significant experience in high-stakes U.S. product liability litigation, Sam works with multinational clients and their national litigation counsel to develop and implement winning defense strategies.

Examples of Sam's litigation successes include: the defense of the first-ever smoking and health case in Kazakhstan, in which the case went from service of the claim to a decision on the merits in 31 days; the pre-trial dismissal of a major product liability class action in Israel; the pre-trial dismissal of an individual smoking and health case in Israel; and the defense of three individual smoking and health cases in Finland.

Sam also counsels multinational clients on document management and e-discovery. He has experience with cross-border document collections and productions for litigation outside the United States. Sam is an original member of the Sedona Conference’s international e-discovery working group.

Sam’s experience in U.S. litigation includes representing one of the nation’s largest tobacco manufacturers in health care cost recovery actions filed by state attorneys general. He was also on the team that tried that first-ever individual lawsuit alleging disease resulting from exposure to passive smoke. He acted as regional counsel for a cigarette manufacturer, overseeing prosecution of the company’s counterfeit cigarette litigation. Sam has also defended pharmaceutical clients in national product liability litigation.

Sam has given presentations on legal developments and case preparation to clients and counsel all over the world. He has been involved in class action seminars for clients and counsel in the U.S., Asia, Europe and the Middle East.

American Bar Association Kansas City Metropolitan Bar Association The Sedona Conference, Working Group 6: International Working Group on E-Discovery & E-Retention

J.D., Georgetown University Law Center, 1991 B.A., University of Virginia – Charlottesville, 1987