Overview
Doug’s practice is almost exclusively civil litigation, typically for the defense. He has tried and defended:
- Toxic Tort and chemical cases
- Drug and Medical Device product liability cases
- Asbestos cases
- Employment Discrimination cases,
- Insurance Coverage cases,
- Environmental Suits,
- Municipal Liability Claims,
- Breach of Contract and various commercial claims, and a wide variety of Personal Injury and Wrongful Death claims.
The heaviest concentration of Doug’s work in personal injury defense has been in products liability. Doug was appointed to the subcommittee for mass tort litigation of the Indiana Supreme Court Rules Committee, whose mission is to develop procedures and rules to facilitate and expedite the handling of asbestos and other mass tort cases for all of Indiana.
Doug has tried numerous jury and bench trials in state and Federal courts throughout Indiana, and in other states across the country such as Illinois, Delaware, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Florida, resulting in a number of published decisions and landmark cases.
In the products liability area, Doug has defended manufacturers and distributors of a wide variety of products, devices, and substances over the last 41 years.
Medical and Scientific
Doug has worked with medical and scientific issues, such as diseases and birth defects allegedly resulting from exposure to asbestos, benzene, silica, coal tar pitch, polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), trichlorethelyne, vinyl chloride, gludalderhyde, formaldehyde, and various other chemicals.
Asbestos
As a result of Doug’s experience in asbestos products liability and complex litigation:
- A judge in Marion (County, Indiana) Superior Court appointed Doug as one of two defendants’ liaison counsel for all then-2000 such cases.
- The judge who had all asbestos product liability cases in the Lake (County, Indiana) Superior Court appointed Doug as the defendants’ liaison counsel for approximately 70 defendants for all cases pending in Lake County to help the Court develop a uniform case management order to govern procedures and discovery for the handling of all pending and future asbestos cases in Northwest Indiana.