Kirkland & Ellis has hired a 13-partner team from King & Spalding to boost its mass torts and product liability capability across the US.
The group is led by Kristen Fournier, who the firm described as “among the most distinguished mass tort litigators practising today”.
Joining her for the move are trial lawyers Kim Bueno and Morty Dubin, and environmental, products and mass tort litigator John Ewald, along with nine further partners. The team has joined Kirkland across New York, Austin, Houston and Los Angeles.
Kirkland said it had added more than 100 litigators so far this year amid ongoing high demand in its litigation practice. Among them was a five-partner mass torts team the firm hired in January from Skadden, in a move that saw it open an office in Philadelphia. The team was led by renowned trial lawyer Allison Brown, who has won a number of trials for Johnson & Johnson.
Jon Ballis, chairman of Kirkland’s executive committee, said the incoming King & Spalding partners were “experienced and widely recognised litigators” in the product liability and mass tort space.
“Adding them to the team led by Alli Brown, with whom they’ve worked side-by-side for years, continues the exciting trajectory of our industry-leading litigation practice,” he added.
At Kirkland, the incoming team will be part of a 950-lawyer litigation practice that consistently earns top billing in the legal rankings guides. The firm’s product liability and mass torts practice has a significant presence in bet-the-company disputes for generic pharmaceutical and manufacturing companies, according to Chambers and Partners, including multidistrict litigation and class actions.
The practice has longstanding relationships with Johnson & Johnson and Abbott Laboratories, which it represented in multidistrict litigation arising out of a recall of infant formula. It also acted for Allergan in thousands of civil suits related to the company’s sale and marketing of opioid painkillers.
New York-based Fournier has spent the past five years at King & Spalding, where she was co-chair of the firm’s toxic and environmental tort litigation team. She brings extensive experience in multi-district litigation, including as lead defence counsel to Janssen Pharmaceuticals and lead counsel to Walmart.
She has also served as national coordinating counsel in high-profile matters, including for Johnson & Johnson’s prolific talc docket in which the company faces allegations that its talcum powder products cause fatal cancer.
Before joining King & Spalding, Fournier spent 15 years at Orrick, where she was promoted to partner and became co-leader of complex litigation and dispute resolution.
Fournier pointed to the “remarkable run of success and expansion” of Kirkland’s litigation department in a statement, adding on LinkedIn that being partners with Brown was “a personal career goal eight years in the making”.
Meanwhile, Bueno, who is based in Austin, only joined King & Spalding last September at the helm of a four-partner team from Butler Snow. A well-regarded trial lawyer, she represents clients in complex commercial litigation with a focus on pharmaceutical and medical device litigation, and has recently served as lead trial counsel for Johnson & Johnson and Monsanto, among others.
Dubin and Ewald joined King & Spalding with Fournier in 2020, having been partners at Orrick. Dubin is a first-chair trial lawyer who has tried and won cases for The Dow Chemical Company and Johnson & Johnson, while Ewald is a trial lawyer who has served as trial counsel for Johnson & Johnson in its talc cases. Both are based in New York.
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