Weil represented Bovis Lend Lease, Inc. in the World Trade Center Disaster Site Litigation, a mass tort action in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. Weil played a major role in the passage of legislation by the U.S. Congress to provide coverage for health care costs and compensation to 9/11 first responders, and to limit liability for Bovis and other construction management companies.

Weil represents CIT Group Inc., a lessor of rail cars, in connection with wrongful death and bankruptcy litigation in the United States and Canada arising out of a train derailment outside of Quebec, Canada. Weil recently succeeded in transferring more than a dozen wrongful death claims to the bankruptcy court in Maine overseeing the liquidation of the railroad operator.

Weil also represents CIT in a first-of-its-kind multi-million dollar dispute in which CIT seeks compensation from a lessee for corrosion damage to its tank cars sustained during the transport of “fracked” crude oil from the Bakken region. The case is venued in state court in Texas and scheduled for trial in May 2017.

Weil represents Dometic Corporation in a putative class action litigation filed in the Southern District of Florida alleging that the gas absorption refrigerators manufactured by Dometic for use in recreational vehicles and boats are defectively designed and manufactured. The plaintiffs seek certification of a nationwide class of consumers, as well as a number of state sub-classes, consisting of all purchasers of the gas absorption refrigerators. In August 2017, the Court granted Dometic’s motion for summary judgment and dismissed the case in its entirety, holding that, among other things, the Plaintiffs had failed to establish that there is any “inherent defect that is manifest in all Dometic cooling units.”

Weil has been retained as lead trial counsel to represent ExxonMobil in a number of disputes in state and federal courts relating to the use of MTBE as an additive in gasoline. The actions have been brought by various States, including New Hampshire, Vermont and New Jersey, seeking to recover for alleged groundwater contamination at sites throughout those states. The federal action, involving claims by the State of New Jersey, is part of the MDL currently pending in the Southern District of New York. The other actions are pending in state court.

Weil represents Nortek Global HVAC LLC (NGHL), a subsidiary of Nortek and a leading manufacturer of heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems, as lead counsel in defense of putative state and nationwide consumer class actions pending in Florida and Tennessee federal courts. Plaintiffs are purchasers of residential HVAC systems manufactured, distributed and sold by NGHL that allegedly contained defective copper evaporator coils. In 2016, Weil defeated plaintiffs’ motion to certify a class in the Florida case, as well as won a motion to dismiss with prejudice in the Tennessee case.

Weil secured a complete defense verdict for Philip Morris USA in a class action tried to a jury in Boston federal court. The plaintiffs brought a medical monitoring class action on behalf of allegedly over 30,000 Massachusetts smokers who smoked Marlboro cigarettes, seeking to have Philip Morris USA fund a screening program for the early detection of lung cancer. Plaintiffs sought a comprehensive program that would have included yearly low-dose CT scans, which are now the standard of care for the early detection of lung cancer for certain patients. Plaintiffs’ legal theory was design defect, alleging that our client could have made a safer cigarette that would have decreased their risk of subcellular injuries caused by smoking. Originally filed in 2006, the case was certified as a class action in 2010. Weil was brought in as lead trial counsel in 2012. After 10 years of litigation and three-week jury trial, our client won a unanimous verdict on the first question on the verdict sheet – Marlboro cigarettes are not defective and unreasonably dangerous.

Weil successfully represented Procter & Gamble (P&G) as lead counsel in a high-profile MDL in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida in which plaintiffs alleged that they were injured through their use of the popular denture cream, Fixodent. Specifically, plaintiffs alleged that zinc contained in the denture creams manufactured by P&G and others caused neurological problems. Plaintiffs filed numerous Florida state law claims, including strict product liability, negligence, intentional misrepresentation, breach of express warranty, implied warranty, and violation of Florida’s Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act. In 2014, Weil won a significant victory before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit that affirmed the trial court’s Daubert and summary judgment orders in the lead case, which excluded plaintiffs’ expert testimony and resultantly found that plaintiffs could not sustain their burden of proof. While the Chapman case was on appeal, the remaining plaintiffs in MDL 2051 were granted an opportunity to proffer new experts and any new science in support of their causation theory. P&G again challenged plaintiffs’ new experts and purported new science through the submission of additional Daubert motions seeking to exclude those general causation experts. In January 2015, the trial court granted P&G’s motion to exclude all of the plaintiffs’ general causation experts, a decision that led to the dismissal with prejudice of 62 plaintiffs in April 2015; in June 2016, the Eleventh Circuit affirmed.

In late August and October 2016, the trial court judge separately dismissed all of the remaining six cases in the MDL. Then, in October 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court denied plaintiffs’ motion for certiorari, declining to hear their appeal of the June 2016 affirmation.

Weil also serves as lead trial counsel for P&G in a consumer fraud class action in Ohio federal court relating to the probiotic dietary supplement, Align. The five-state class of purchasers of Align has been certified and certification was upheld by the Sixth Circuit; Weil was appointed as lead counsel after the Sixth Circuit ruling. Plaintiffs allege that P&G’s marketing of Align was misleading because, among other things, P&G lacks sufficient substantiation for its claims. Plaintiffs seek a full refund, with total damages totalling hundreds of millions of dollars.

Weil serves as lead trial counsel for Spanish energy company Repsol in a major litigation that involves allegedly billions of dollars of liabilities in connection with pollution of the Passaic River in New Jersey, which was dismissed in its entirety on summary judgement on the eve of trial. After a series of settlements between the parties and the state in 2013 and 2014, the Weil team achieved a number of significant and case-changing victories. First, in a February 2015 order granting Repsol’s motion to dismiss, Weil eliminated nine of OCC’s eleven cross claims, leaving only OCC’s claims for recovery based on an alter ego theory of contract liability. Second, in a series of January 2016 recommendations from the Special Master granting Repsol’s motion for summary judgment and denying OCC’s summary judgment motion, Weil eliminated OCC’s remaining claims for recovery based on alter ego and retained its counterclaim under the New Jersey Spill Act against OCC for recovery of the $65 million Repsol paid in clean-up costs in its settlement with the state departments. Those recommendations were entered in toto by the New Jersey Superior Court after several days of oral argument in April 2016. The court agreed with our argument and interpretation of alter ego law, finding OCC could not, as it argued, pierce the veil directly to Repsol. Instead, under its theory of alter ego liability, which included claims against several entities in a multi-layered corporate chain, OCC was required by law to pierce the veil of each intervening corporate entity in that chain. Weil was successful in presenting a number of reasons why OCC could not meet this legal requirement, including OCC’s failure to link any domination by Repsol to its alleged harm, as well as the existence of a solvent entity that stood as an insurmountable barrier between Maxus and Repsol that was able to pay for any obligation allegedly owed to OCC, thereby eliminating any potential of harm or injustice. All claims against Repsol have been resolved, and the court has allowed Repsol to pursue its counterclaim against OCC for recovery of the $65 million in clean-up costs it paid in settling with the New Jersey state departments, which was set for trial in June 2016. On the eve of trial, Maxus Energy Corp. filed for bankruptcy. Weil continues to represent Repsol and resist OCC’s efforts to re-litigate the adjudicated claims in a bankruptcy court.

Weil serves as national counsel for Sanofi in a putative consumer class action relating to the company’s global recall of its epinephrine injection product, Auvi-Q. Plaintiffs alleges violations of the Illinois Consumer Fraud Act and unjust enrichment with respect to the recall. In July 2016, an Illinois federal judge granted, without prejudice, Weil’s motion to dismiss all claims.

Weil serves as lead counsel for Toyobo, a fiber manufacturer headquartered in Japan, in a complex series of investigations and litigation – including False Claims Act litigation brought by the federal government and another brought by a whistleblower – relating to the performance of Toyobo’s Zylon fiber in bullet-resistant vests used by thousands of law enforcement agencies worldwide. To date, we have successfully resolved several aspects of this multi-faceted matter. Most recently, Weil obtained a favorable summary judgment decision in September 2015 that trimmed certain of the U.S. government’s claims, considerably narrowing the ongoing case. Trial of the surviving claims is expected in late 2017.

Weil represents Walgreens Boots Alliance in connection with several proposed consumer class actions filed against it and Theranos, Inc. relating to high-profile issues affecting one of Theranos’s primary blood testing products.