October 2009: Hanly Conroy welcomes Mitchell Breit to the firm.

Hanly Conroy is delighted to announce the arrival of Mitchell Breit as the newest member of the firm. Mitchell has a long and distinguished career as a plaintiffs’ class action, mass torts and environmental catastrophe lawyer, and he brings to the firm his experience and expertise in those areas along with some very high profile cases. Prior to joining the firm Mitchell was a partner in the New York offices of Whatley Drake, before that a partner at Milberg Weiss and before that at Weitz & Luxenberg.

May 2009: Hanly Conroy partners Paul Hanly, Andrea Bierstein and Steven Hayes again named to “best lawyers” lists.

The 2009 edition of New York Super Lawyers again names three of the six Hanly Conroy partners: Paul Hanly, Andrea Bierstein and Steven M. Hayes. “We are delighted that fully 50% of our partners have been named to this list once again,” said Andrea Bierstein, referring to the fact that she appears for the second, and partners Hanly and Hayes for the third year in a row. “That is a testament to the extraordinary abilities of our firm and the reputation it has garnered,” she added. Separately, Hayes has been named to the 2009 edition of Best Lawyers in America for his stellar work in the area of entertainment law.

April 9, 2009: Hanly Conroy client prevails on important Statute of Limitations issue in Delaware Supreme Court.

On April 9, 2009, Hanly Conroy won a significant victory for its client – and for plaintiffs generally – when the Supreme Court of Delaware, sitting en banc, unanimously ruled that a plaintiff who had previously sued in Texas – and whose case had been dismissed in Texas for lack of personal jurisdiction – could bring a new action in Delaware, even though the Delaware Statute of Limitations had by then expired. The Court agreed with Hanly Conroy’s argument that, pursuant to the Delaware “Saving Statute,” the plaintiff had one year from the final termination of his Texas lawsuit to commence a new action in Delaware. Represented by other lawyers, the plaintiff had originally sued in Texas in 2001, and he litigated his case all the way to an unsuccessful petition for a writ of certiorari in the United States Supreme Court in 2006. Plaintiff then retained Hanly Conroy and started a new lawsuit in Delaware. The Delaware Court of Chancery dismissed the new case, ruling that the one-year period of the Saving Statute had begun to run in March of 2006 when the Texas Supreme Court denied a motion by plaintiff for a rehearing. Since the plaintiff sued in Delaware in April 2007, the Court of Chancery ruled that the new Delaware lawsuit had been filed too late. Reversing the lower court, the Delaware Supreme Court ruled that the Texas action did not fully terminate, for purposes of the Saving Statute, until the United States Supreme Court denied plaintiff’s petition for certiorari in October 2006. Measuring the one-year period from that date, plaintiff’s Delaware action was timely. The lawsuit, Reid v. Siniscalchi, is a derivative action involving claims arising from a joint venture to finance Russian communications satellites.

March 23, 2009: Hanly Conroy clients first in nation to be paid in landmark Pfizer Bextra/Celebrex Settlement.

More than 95% of the 203 clients of Hanly Conroy and co-counsel SimmonsCooper LLC have received their settlement amounts in the landmark Pfizer settlement of more than 5,000 Bextra and Celebrex personal injury claims, the first large volume of such claims to have been paid.  “Working with the tremendous back-office support of our co-counsel SimmonsCooper, we were able to get nearly all of our clients paid their settlements in the last few days,” explained Jayne Conroy, one of three lead negotiators of the terms of the nationwide settlement program. “It is highly gratifying to have been able to secure these early payments for so many deserving victims, and we are especially delighted to have received so many emails and calls from clients thanking our two firms for our work,” she added.

Hanly Conroy is at the forefront of national, mass tort personal injury litigation, and is dedicated to achieving justice for all of its clients.

March 4, 2009: Supreme Court Rules Patients May Sue Drug Companies for Injuries; Bush Administration Policy on State Court Suits Rejected.

The United States Supreme Court on March 4, 2009 rejected the claims of the pharmaceutical industry, with the support of the Bush Administration, that patients may not sue prescription drug manufacturers for injuries resulting from inadequate warnings on drug labels, sometimes called “package inserts,” that accompany all prescription drugs. The case, Wyeth v. Levine, No. 06-1249, pitted the rights of consumers against the pharmaceutical industry’s claim that only the federal Food and Drug Administration can determine whether warnings of risks associated with prescription drugs are adequate, and turned on the issue of whether the existence of FDA regulatory authority “preempts” (trumps) state court civil damage suits. In rejecting that proposition, the Supreme Court expressly rejected the newly-adopted position of the FDA during the Bush Administration that such civil suits unduly burdened the ability of the FDA to regulate prescription drugs. Click here for the Opinion.

“The Court has delivered a fatal blow to the scandalous efforts of the Bush/Rove Administration to steal the constitutional rights of injured patients through its promulgation of the now-discredited FDA Preamble of 2006,” said Jayne Conroy, who leads Hanly Conroy’s prescription drug litigation group. Ms. Conroy added that the Court’s decision in Levine “directly benefits scores of our firm’s clients who are entrenched in complex litigation against the drug companies for the very failures that were at issue in the case before our Supreme Court.”

Hanly Conroy is a leader in prescription drug litigation nationwide, and looks forward to ever more aggressively advancing the rights of its clients in the wake of the important Levine decision.