Ulmer & Berne’s life sciences practice is broad both in its scope and breadth. It provides representation to national and international clients on a nationwide basis and covers numerous areas of law.
Our life sciences practice has an established national presence defending companies in matters that are complex both legally and scientifically. The group defends companies in class action lawsuits, consolidated state proceedings, and federal multi-district litigation, as well as individual lawsuits.
Often, cases being handled by the life sciences group appear on the front pages of our newspapers, as well as the nightly news. Currently, the group represents clients in, among others, litigation involving OxyContin, ephedra, hormone replacement therapy, anti-depressants, oral contraceptives, phenylpropanolamine (“PPA”), phen-fen, amiodarone, latex gloves, and catheters. In some of those cases, the group defends clients against sensational stories of homicide or suicide supposedly associated with the clients’ products.
The group serves as national counsel for numerous public and private companies in the pharmaceutical, medical device, and dietary supplement industries and acts as regional counsel for a variety of others. Current representation includes several class actions, federal multi-district litigations, state-consolidated proceedings, and a wide variety of individual high-exposure lawsuits. In addition, the group serves as exclusive national product liability counsel for some of those companies.
We believe that we offer a unique, high value service to the pharmaceutical industry. Our group includes various areas of expertise in addition to legal. For example, members of our group have backgrounds in the disciplines of pharmacy, pharmacology, chemistry, biochemistry, medical technology, as well as business, negotiations, and engineering. In addition to providing litigation defense, we perform risk assessment, due diligence for product acquisitions and mergers, advice and counsel relating to regulatory matters, and assistance in acquiring and/or reducing premiums for product liability insurance. We maintain a fully-searchable database of every adverse event reported to the FDA since 1969 for every pharmaceutical product sold in the United States, which permits the compilation of statistics vital to those areas of representation.
Our life sciences practice also includes representation of companies on intellectual property law (including copyright, trademark, patent and trade secret prosecution and litigation), bioscience law, and the laws applicable to the acquisition, licensing, distribution, transfer, and disposition of technology and pharmaceutical products. The Firm represents clients in mergers, acquisitions and divestitures, employment and employee benefit matters, and other “full-service” practice areas, as well.