Overview
Every year, hundreds of class action lawsuits are filed against food and dietary supplement manufacturers, and both the defense and plaintiffs’ bar often accuse the other of disingenuous arguments and unfair tactics. In this webinar, leading litigators from both sides will share their perspectives on responsible–and irresponsible–advocacy and tactics in filing, litigating, and settling class action litigation. The discussion will also include guiding principles for counsel when interacting with each other and the court, and changes they would like to see in the future for more cordial and productive resolutions.
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Speakers
David T. Biderman, Partner, Perkins Coie LLP
Timothy G. Blood, Managing Partner, Blood Hurst & O’Reardon LLP
Elizabeth M. Chiarello, Partner, Sidley Austin LLP
Maia Kats, Managing Attorney, Just Food Law PLLC
Moderated by Michael T. Roberts, Executive Director for the Resnick Center for Food Law and Policy, UCLA School of Law
DAVID L. BIDERMAN, a partner in Perkins Coie’s San Francisco and Los Angeles offices, focuses his practice on mass tort litigation and consumer class actions. He heads the firm’s Consumer Products & Services Litigation group. He has represented a wide variety of companies in state and federal courts in California for 30 years. Regarding consumer class actions, David represents consumer packaged goods and food companies whose nutritional or health claims have been challenged. He also has represented search engines and other online companies as well as consumer finance companies. He has a record of favorable results for clients. He successfully tried a major consumer fraud class action on behalf of one of the world’s major search engines in a case involving online gambling advertisements. For that same client, he negotiated a favorable settlement of a class action challenging its online advertising pricing. He represented a major coffee retailer in defeating a class action on standing grounds. He also has litigated pre-emption defenses arising out of food labeling and obtained a dismissal for a client whose nutritional statements were challenged.
TIMOTHY G. BLOOD is a co-founding partner and the firm’s managing partner at Blood Hurst & O’Reardon LLP where he focuses on the nationwide prosecution of class actions on behalf of consumers, insurance policy holders, and investors. He has represented tens of millions of consumers in state and federal courts and before the Federal Trade Commission, the California Department of Justice and the California Department of Insurance. He has lobbied for consumers in the US Senate and the California legislature. Mr. Blood has been appointed lead counsel in numerous class actions in courts across the country, has tried class actions, and has obtained record setting settlements, including the largest false advertising settlement in the history of the FTC and the largest false advertising settlement against a food manufacturer. He also has obtained favorable appellate decisions in food and dietary supplement class actions involving class certification, DSHEA preemption, and the standard of proof for scientific evidence.
ELIZABETH CHIARELLO is a partner and a member of Sidley Austin LLP’s Products Liability practice. She focuses on the defense of companies in products liability, mass tort, toxic tort, class action, and other complex litigation matters. Beth has successfully defended class actions and products liability cases on behalf of Fortune 500 companies in a variety of industries, including food, nutritional supplements, medical device and device sterilization, pharmaceutical, electronics, financial services, transportation, and cosmetics. She has served as national coordinating counsel in a variety of putative nationwide class actions and mass tort lawsuits filed in federal and state courts across the country. Beth also has trial experience, having given opening statements and conducted direct and cross-examination of witnesses, as well as voir dire. When settlement is appropriate, Beth has also helped her clients negotiate nationwide class action settlements, and has successfully defended contested and uncontested class action settlements in state and federal courts. She has received numerous accolades, including Law Bulletin’s Leading Lawyers recognition as a Leading & Emerging Women Lawyers in Class Action/Mass Tort Defense Law and Products Liability Defense Law and The Legal 500 US recommendation in the categories of Product Liability and Mass Tort defense: Automotive/Transport, as well as in Consumer Products.
MAIA KATS is founding member of Just Food Law, and former Litigation Director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest. She is nationally recognized as a leading expert in food class actions. Maia has led and resolved numerous consumer class actions, including against PepsiCo, Coca-Cola, General Mills, Campbell Soup, Kellogg’s, GNC, and CVS. Her cases have been featured on Good Morning America and ABC News, and many others have been reported in a variety of publications including the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, New York Times, BBC News, Bloomberg, the Los Angeles Times, as well as in several international news outlets. She is a member of Law360’s Consumer Protection Editorial Board. An honors graduate (magna cum laude) of the University of Michigan and Michigan Law School, Maia began her litigation career on Wall Street with the law firm of Hughes Hubbard & Reed.
MICHAEL T. ROBERTS is the founding Executive Director of the Resnick Center for Food Law and Policy at UCLA School of Law. He is well versed in a broad range of legal and policy issues from farm to fork in local, national, and global food supply systems. He has authored the first major treatise on food law entitled, Food Law in the United States (Cambridge University Press). He is a co-editor of Food Law & Policy, a new casebook published by Wolters Kluwer. He has also written several other chapters, articles, and papers on food law topics. Roberts is actively involved in the development of food law and policy. He is a Research Fellow for Renmin University School of Law’s Center for Coordination and Innovation for Food Safety and an Adjunct Professor of Law for East China University of Science and Technology (Shanghai), lecturing annually on food law topics. Roberts is particularly interested in the global governance of food and recently led the Resnick Center into a partnership with the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) on a series of research and advisory initiatives to confront global food security, nutrition, safety, and quality. Roberts is also very involved in several projects centering on the development of the history of food law and in the regulation of food and innovation. In addition to working with the Advisory Board for the Resnick Center, Roberts serves on various boards related to food law and policy. He is member of the Board of Directors for the newly established non-profit, Feed the Truth organization and a founding board member and historian for the Academy for Food Law and Policy as well ason the advisory board for the World Food Law Institute. In 2000, he left his law practice and enrolled in the LLM program on agricultural law at the University of Arkansas School of Law, the only such program in the United States. Since then, Roberts has engaged in a variety of professional capacities related to food law and policy. After completing the LLM program, he was invited to join the University of Arkansas School of Law as a Research Professor of Law and as the Director of the National Agricultural Law Center, teaching food law and policy and founding the law school’s Journal of Food Law and Policy. He is the former first chair of the Lex Mundi (world’s largest association of private law firms) international Agribusiness practice group. Roberts also was of counsel in Washington DC with Venable LLP, as a member of the firm’s food and agricultural law practice group, and special counsel to the Roll Global farming and food companies headquartered in Los Angeles. There, he was responsible for global food regulation, trade, and public policy. He was also a visiting scholar and consultant to the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in Rome.Virtual Learning FAQ
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