Practice Areas: Product & Consumer Litigation

Consumer Class Action Litigation

McGuireWoods has extensive experience defending state and national consumer class actions involving allegations of product defects, tainted foodstuffs, and deceptive or fraudulent trade practices. We have experience handling all aspects of such cases, from the critical and unique procedural issues of class certification, discovery, dispositive motions, and trial. We have developed significant resources to handle the often extensive discovery arising in class action litigation, and we routinely coordinate large document productions for clients.

Because class action litigation can transform an individual consumer’s small dollar complaint into bet-the-company litigation, we take a company-focused approach to class action defense. While we can (and do) draw on a voluminous library of work product developed by our lawyers, we tailor each defense to each client’s specific needs – taking into account each client's overall business goals, public relations strategy, and its desire to minimize litigation costs.

We have a team-based approach designed to deliver efficiency and value. Our teams include lawyers experienced in the substantive allegations of a particular complaint, such as product liability; lawyers who devote their practices almost entirely to class action issues; and trial lawyers who participate early in strategic decisions in the event a matter ultimately proceeds to trial. Our consumer class action group lawyers are involved in other types of class actions, and participate in the firm’s broader class action practice group. 

For more information on our approach to consumer class-action defense, see the firms’ weblog, Class Action Countermeasures, maintained by counsel Andrew Trask, co-author of the Class Action Playbook (Oxford University Press).