On Dec. 19, Law360 featured its MVPs of the year, including Simmons Hanly Conroy Shareholder Jayne Conroy, who the legal publication named a 2016 MVP in the area of Product Liability.
Chosen for her substantial courtroom success within the last year, Law360’s Andrew Strickler wrote of Jayne, “Conroy, a co-founder of the mass tort power house, is a frequent member of the multidistrict litigation leadership and has successfully pressed high-profile cases against Volkswagen and Syngenta, among many others.”
Jayne’s track record within the last year includes serving as leadership on cases including those mentioned above, as well as the DePuy Pinnacle MDL. Jayne also serves as a member of the trial team in the MDL and helped secure two staggering verdicts in the last year on behalf of victims of the DePuy Pinnacle metal-on-metal hip replacement devices.
In the second bellwether trial against DePuy, a multi-plaintiff case, Jayne and the rest of the lead trial team represented 5 plaintiffs and secured an initial $502 million verdict. The verdict came after the team unearthed significant discovery, proving DePuy knew of the design defects in its hip replacement devices.
“We believed it was the best way to get a more representative cross-section among almost 9,000 plaintiffs,” Jayne told Law360. “With five people, it was easy for the jury to see that all had experienced the same toxic reaction to the metal hip, and it wasn’t the result of some medical malpractice or other disease process.”
In a third bellwether trial, Jayne and the lead trial team secured a $1.04 billion verdict on behalf of 6 victims of Depuy Pinnacle’s hip replacement devices.
In addition to Jayne’s work on the DePuy MDL, Law360 highlighted her work in the Syngenta AG corn litigation, the Toyota Unintended Acceleration MDL and more. Last fall, Jayne and fellow Named Shareholder Paul Hanly were retained by county officials in Suffolk County, New York, to litigate against pharmaceutical companies for their aggressive marketing tactics which led to an opioid epidemic.
In the article by Law360, the case is explained as “a fairly novel theory that associated economic damages suffered by the county with the drug companies, and increased costs for things like police departments and health programs,” Jayne said to the legal publication. “But it makes perfect sense and I’m confident it will be ultimately be successful.”
Read the full article by Law360 here.
