Our pharmaceutical and medical device practice is sophisticated and diversified. We have acted as national and regional coordinating counsel for pharmaceutical companies. We have defended many pharmaceutical clients in trials and appeals in all courts and counseled them on administrative and regulatory affairs and related general corporate matters.

We are especially proud to have been retained by many clients to supervise pharmaceutical and/or medical device litigation on a national or regional basis. For example, in the past, lawyers in our present firm served as national coordinating counsel for E.R. Squibb & Sons, Inc. in the diethylstilbestrol (DES) litigation. Jeffery Carlson was national coordinating counsel in the L-tryptophan litigation on behalf of Nutrilite, a subsidiary of Amway Corporation, Amcon, James Pharmaceutical and Walmart. The L-tryptophan litigation dealt with many cutting-edge bio-technical issues involving complex medical and scientific issues. For example, it was contended that a genetically-engineered substance was a contributory factor in introducing the contaminant into the nutritional food supplement. Our lawyers have served as regional counsel for Hoeschst Marion Roussel, Inc. (now Aventis Pharmaceuticals, Inc.) in the Bendectin birth defect litigation, in which our partners tried several of these very challenging birth defect cases to defense victories and also established a new rule concerning the admissibility of expert testimony in federal court actions as announced by the United States Supreme Court in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, 113 S.Ct. 2786 (1993).

In addition to serving our pharmaceutical and medical device clients in various coordinating roles, we also serve as local counsel. For example, we are currently defending a client in the Fen-Phen cases in the California coordinated proceedings known as In Re: Diet Drug Litigation.

Jeffery Carlson currently sits as a member of the Steering Committee of the Drug and Device Section of the Defense Research Institute (DRI). He is also a Steering Committee member of the Industrywide Litigation Section of DRI. Recently, he completed two years of service as Chairperson of the Federation of Insurance & Corporate Counsel Pharmaceutical Section. For many years, Mr. Carlson has been a member of the Editorial Board of Rx For The Defense, a DRI publication consisting of recent developments in pharmaceutical and medical device law. In addition, he has lectured and published widely in the area of scientific and medical evidence and trial technique in the areas of pharmaceutical and medical devices.

In the past, we successfully resolved hundreds of DES cases pending throughout the United States. Jeffery Carlson favorably resolved 22 severe brain damage cases allegedly caused by the ingestion of AME which were pending in the Sacramento Superior Court. In the past, lawyers in our firm were involved in resolving approximately 120 Bendectin cases on behalf of Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc., pending throughout the Western United States.

Further, we possess extensive trial experience in this area, including four birth defect cases tried by Mr. Carlson which resulted in three defense jury verdicts and a directed verdict in the defendant's favor after a hung jury. The trial of these cases ranged from six weeks to nine months and were venued in federal court in Salt Lake City (6 week trial), Los Angeles County (7 week trial), Boise, Idaho (6 week trial) and Santa Clara County (6 1/2 month trial). All four of these trials were full-blown punitive damage trials and the injuries all involved limb reduction defects, including the case in Santa Clara County, in which the plaintiff was a March of Dimes poster boy who was born without arms and with deformed legs. The plaintiffs' attorneys in these cases are all well-known and highly regarded plaintiffs' personal injury lawyers. In the federal court case in Salt Lake City, it was Tom Bleakley from Detroit; in the Los Angeles case, it was Terence J. Mix; in the Boise, Idaho case, it was David J. Harney; and in the Santa Clara County case, it was James Butler.

Our work in the pharmaceutical and medical device products liability area provides us with excellent preparation for organizing and conducting the defense of complex litigation. We have extensive experience in all facets of automated litigation support. We have developed an internal computerized system which we use, among other things, for mass document control including subject coding and retrieval; deposition discovery, full text retrieval and abstract formulation; and expert and lay witness tracking. We have the ability and experience to create customized databases tailored to the specific needs of our clients.