Sheila Birnbaum and Mark Cheffo have joined the firm’s New York office as partners. Sheila, a market-leading mass torts and insurance trial attorney, and Mark, a renowned products liability trial attorney, co-head the firm’s Global Products Liability and Mass Torts Practice.
Prior to joining the firm, Sheila served as co-head of Skadden, Arps, Meagher & Flom’s Mass Torts and Insurance Group. Before joining Skadden and founding its products liability practice, she was a tenured professor at New York University School of Law and Fordham University School of Law. She also served as Associate Dean of the Graduate Division of New York University. Sheila represents the world’s best known companies in their largest and most complex mass torts cases. She has secured two groundbreaking wins in the United States Supreme Court, including Campbell v. State Farm, which reversed a $145 million punitive damages award as unconstitutionally excessive.
Mark has represented defendants in groundbreaking products liability, insurance and mass torts litigation, serving as national coordinating and trial counsel in large, complex matters and in individual cases. He has appeared in cases on behalf of pharmaceutical companies such as Pfizer, Endo, and Amgen and numerous medical device manufacturers, designers of bioengineered agricultural products, and sellers of consumer and industrial products. Mark has served as lead defense counsel in many multi-district proceedings, including the Zoloft, Neurontin, Darvon/Darvocet, and Epogen/Aranesp MDL proceedings. He currently serves as lead counsel for thousands of personal injury and consumer fraud cases pending in state and federal courts throughout the country.
