Practice Areas & Industries: Fulbright & Jaworski L.L.P.

Practice/Industry Group Overview

Fulbright & Jaworski has represented clients in a wide range of industrial sectors in toxic tort, mass tort and environmental litigation. We defend companies both individually and as part of shared counsel joint defense groups. Many of these cases are filed in plaintiff-friendly venues where having defense counsel with significant experience in this practice area is particularly important.

Our broad experience includes virtually every type and size of lawsuit arising from the manufacture, handling, sale and disposal of chemicals and other alleged hazardous substance. We have experience in the health sciences (biology, toxicology and epidemiology), industrial engineering and industrial hygiene.

Services Available

Our attorneys have developed litigation skills on the cutting edge of this practice area. We are particularly adept at pursuing and defending against Daubert motions to exclude expert testimony in federal and state courts. Additionally, we are skilled at handling extensive discovery of digital documents, such as e-mail and computer databases, and have defended against aggressive use of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 30(b)(6) and apex depositions.

Fulbright & Jaworski's Toxic, Mass Tort and Environmental Practice Group addresses novel issues raised by the nexus between common and statutory law: preemption, abstention, primary agency jurisdiction and separation of powers.

Applying Our Extensive Skills

Our Toxic, Mass Tort and Environmental Practice Group has applied its experience in lawsuits where:

• Plaintiffs number from one to thousands, ranging from individual workers to neighborhood groups and groups with environmental justice claims, purported nationwide and statewide classes.
• Class certification is sought (nationwide, regional, and local classes).
• Personal injury is alleged, involving complex medical and public health information (for example, exposure assessment, toxicity, epidemiology and medicine).
• Property damage or devaluation is alleged, involving complex environmental assessment, property use and property valuation issues (for example, issues arising from application of hydrogeology, environmental engineering, real estate appraisal and statistical property value analysis)
• Personal injury and property damage are alleged from industrial accidents, such as explosions, fires and chemical releases
• Federal and state agencies seek to enforce compliance with environmental laws
• Private individuals seek to enforce compliance with environmental laws under statutory citizen suit provisions

These lawsuits have included virtually all tort causes of action and forms of relief:

• Intentional torts (trespass, private nuisance, private nuisance, assault, battery, fraud, fraudulent concealment and civil conspiracy)
• Gross negligence, gross neglect and malice
• Negligence, non-intentional nuisance and so-called pollution tort causes of action in certain states
• Strict liability (ultrahazardous activities, products liability and market share liability)
• Fear claims (fear of cancer and medical monitoring)
• Relief (money damages, injunctive relief and declaratory relief)

Toxic Tort: Superior, Cost-Effective Defense

Fulbright & Jaworski strives to provide cost-effective defense by creating a streamlined litigation team, developing tightly focused defense strategies, employing cost-effective litigation support technology and dividing tasks among other defense firms. We work with clients to forecast and budget litigation costs.

Our Toxic, Mass Tort and Environmental Practice Group has experience in employing several forecasting and budgeting strategies:

• We are able to apply Fulbright's long-standing experience to forecast future costs of many types of litigation matters.
• We can track litigation costs by task category to develop cost information specific to each type of client matter. We utilize this cost information in various budgeting tools to forecast future costs.
• We can apply statistical methods of analyzing litigation cost, such as decision trees and probabilistic analysis.
• We are able to utilize reporting systems so that clients can track costs at reasonable intervals throughout the life of each matter.