Toxic Tort/Products Liability

Horvitz & Levy LLP has wide experience in counseling and representing clients in disputes involving products liability, asbestos, and toxic tort litigation. This facet of our practice has grown substantially over the past decade, and includes products liability litigation based on design and/or manufacturing defect, and failure to warn. Our appeals have also involved successor liability issues, the sophisticated purchaser and bulk supplier doctrines, and the burden of proving exposure and causation in toxic tort cases.

In the Lockheed Litigation, Horvitz & Levy LLP represented numerous chemical manufacturer defendants in a coordinated toxic tort proceeding arising from allegations that the defendants failed to warn some 640 aircraft workers at the Lockheed Burbank Skunkworks of the potentially harmful effects of organic solvents used in the aircraft manufacturing process. Horvitz & Levy LLP succeeded in overturning $760 million in punitive damages awarded to two groups of the Lockheed plaintiffs. (Click here to see an article that appeared in The Recorder regarding the litigation.)

In Lockheed Litigation Cases (2004) 115 Cal.App.4th 558 (Lockheed I), Horvitz & Levy LLP secured the affirmance of a defense judgment in a related toxic torts action following the trial court's exclusion of plaintiff's causation expert on grounds that the expert's opinion had no foundation and therefore could not be admitted into evidence. In Lockheed Litigation Cases (2005) 23 Cal.Rptr. 762 [nonpub. decision] (Lockheed II), involving the retrial of 24 of the 640 plaintiffs' claims, the Court of Appeal again affirmed both the trial court's exclusion of the testimony of plaintiffs' sole causation expert on grounds that there was no adequate foundation for the expert's opinion, and the subsequent grant of summary judgment for the defendants.

See a representative list of the toxic tort/products liability cases which have been handled on appeal by Horvitz & Levy LLP.

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