Butler Snow LLP

Pharmaceutical, Medical Device & Healthcare Litigation

Amy Pepke has spent more than 20 years representing clients in high-stakes class and mass-action disputes, particularly in the area of product liability and healthcare litigation. She has extensive experience defending national and international corporations, and individuals, in matters ranging from pharmaceutical and medical device product liability to toxic torts to intellectual property violations. She has applied her skills to every aspect of litigation from discovery, critical depositions, motion practice, trial, through the appellate process. Amy is a creative problem solver, legal strategist, and committed advocate. She is the immediate past chair of the Firm’s Appellate and Written Advocacy Group.

Amy’s recent experience includes serving as legal strategy counsel, MDL appellate trial counsel and appellate counsel for Johnson & Johnson in the pelvic mesh litigation. In this role she has written, directed, and overseen the preparation of over a thousand Daubert motions, and hundreds of dispositive motions, leading a team obtaining summary judgment or dismissals in over 70 cases in the last two years.

Along with the trial teams, as appellate trial counsel, Amy has helped secure defense wins in every pelvic mesh trial that has gone to a jury in the last 18 months, spending nearly two months in trials in 2022. This includes Snowden v. Ethicon, Inc. and Johnson & Johnson, a five-week trial in which a Texas jury sided with the defense in a product liability trial involving $28M+ in claimed damages. This case was selected for “CVN’s Top 10 Most Impressive Defense Verdicts of 2022.” In 2023, she served as lead appellate counsel, arguing the case to the Eleventh Circuit,  and obtaining a ruling affirming summary judgment in favor of her client in the CoolSculpting® litigation. Cates v. Zeltiq Aesthetics, Inc., 2023 WL 467128 (11th Cir. 2023). Additionally, in December 2021, she obtained exclusion of plaintiff’s primary expert and subsequent summary judgment in a pelvic mesh case that was affirmed on appeal in Donalds v. Ethicon Inc., 2023 WL 2446703 (4th Cir. 2023). In 2020, in Willet v. Johnson and Johnson, 465 F.Supp.3d 895 (S.D. Iowa 2020), she obtained exclusion of plaintiff’s primary expert and subsequent summary judgment in a pelvic mesh case. In 2018, in Kaiser v. Johnson & Johnson et al., Case No. 2:17-cv-00114 (N.D. Ind.), she obtained a multimillion-dollar remittitur on appeal in a pelvic mesh case. In 2017, Amy served as appellate trial counsel in Herrera-Nevarez v. Ethicon Inc. et al., Case No. 17 C 3930 (N.D. Ill.), which resulted in a defense verdict on design defect, failure to warn and negligence claims. She also recently represented a national restaurant group at the Tennessee Supreme Court in a case involving claims of vicarious liability, negligent hiring and supervision of an employee convicted of rape and robbery of a local franchise manager.

She has served as national co-lead of the motions and briefing team in testosterone litigation, co-lead for Butler Snow’s motions team and appellate trial counsel in the hernia mesh litigation, and as a member of the motion teams in the Pradaxa®, Propecia® and Tylenol® litigations. Her experience further includes obtaining summary judgment for a manufacturer of metalworking fluids in mass torts case involving over 200 plaintiffs with claims exceeding $100 million. She has successfully represented corporations in EEOC related actions and investigations involving allegations of sexual misconduct. She also previously participated as a member of a Deferred Prosecution Federal Monitor Team for a medical device company. Amy has had the privilege of acting as a court-appointed, pro bono, guardian ad litem in parental termination proceedings.

Amy is a Fellow of the American Bar Association, Litigation Counsel of America, Tennessee Bar Foundation and Memphis Bar Association. She is recognized by Best Lawyers in America® (Lawyer of the Year, Appellate Practice – Memphis, 2022) and Mid-South Super Lawyers®. In 2019, the Tennessee Supreme Court appointed Amy to the Tennessee Board of Law Examiners. She was appointed to the Standing Local Rules Committee, Local Patent Rules for the United States District Court for the Western District of Tennessee and served as the Committee Chair from 2012-2018. She was recently appointed to the Content Scope Committee of the National Conference of Bar Examiners.

Amy obtained her J.D. from Vanderbilt University Law School, Order of the Coif, and B.A., with honors, from Spring Hill College. Following law school, she clerked with the Honorable J. Julia Gibbons, Chief Judge of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Tennessee. She is admitted to practice in Tennessee, admitted in the Fourth, Sixth, Seventh, and Eleventh Circuit, and the United States Supreme Court.