Practice Areas

Howard Rice's Consumer and Product Liability Litigation attorneys have substantial experience handling  significant consumer litigation including claims involving California's unfair competition statutes (e.g. Business and Professions Code Sections 17200 and 17500) and complex product liability litigation, both locally in California and nationally as part of coordinated defense efforts. 

Claims like these often present unique challenges: e.g., multi-state proceedings, complex issues of jurisdiction, choice of law, constitutional jurisprudence and governmental regulation (to name a few), and cutting-edge doctrinal developments, all on top of high stakes and in a highly sensitive regulatory and/or public relations environment. Effective advocacy in these circumstances requires an unusual combination of intellectual ability and artful trial skills and that is what our attorneys bring to bear.

Our clients include companies involved in tobacco, medical device, pharmaceutical, food, beverage and other products and processes in cases where both fraud and product hazard are often alleged.  We have been at the forefront in litigating cutting-edge issues in such litigation, ranging from the multi-state Howard Hughes probate case to the massive PG&E bankruptcy litigation to the tobacco litigation involving both individual injury claims and private and public Attorneys General actions.

• Corporate misconduct, business tort and class action litigation
• California's unfair competition statutes, including Business and Professions Code sections 17200 and 17500
• Governmental regulatory issues
• Constitutional, federal preemption, privilege and other defenses to deceptive practices and defective products

Representative Engagements

Over the last 20 years, Howard Rice represented the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company in the defense of its smoking and health litigation in the Western United States.  We have defended the company in its personal injury and wrongful death, Medicare reimbursement, antitrust, deceptive advertising and statutory violation cases.  These multiparty cases involved cutting-edge issues of federal preemption and California product liability law, as well as coordinated defense strategies in other smoking and health litigation occurring nationwide.  In connection with the defense of personal injury and wrongful death matters, Howard Rice has achieved extraordinary results for the company, including over seventy-five dismissals without payment of any settlement dollars.  In one adverse verdict obtained against our client, Howard Rice obtained a reversal and remand for a new trial.

When Kmart Corporation was sued in California state court, it turned to Howard Rice. The suit alleged unfair competition and other consumer claims arising out of the company's allegedly widespread, if unintentional, overcharging of customers at the checkout counter. Plaintiffs sought damages for themselves and a class of customers and restitution on behalf of the general public in excess of $30 million. We designed a strategy to systematically knock the legs out from underneath the plaintiffs' claims. In pretrial motions, the firm persuaded the court to deny class certification outright and to limit the Section 17200 claim in certain material respects. At the close of the plaintiffs' case at trial, we moved for judgment in favor of the company, arguing that, given the factual stipulations and evidence brought to light in the cross-examination of plaintiffs' own expert, plaintiffs' statistical case was so flawed that the company should not even have to present its own countervailing evidence. This motion, too, was granted and judgment was entered in favor of our client, dismissing the remaining claims in their entirety and awarding our client its costs of the suit.

Representative Clients

• Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company
• Longs Drug Stores
• Major League Baseball Properties
• Manulife Financial
• Transamerica HomeFirst, Inc.

Related Groups

• Commercial Litigation