Elizabeth helps companies navigate product safety issues, defending her clients against high-stakes product liability claims and providing product regulatory, safety, and risk mitigation advice.

Elizabeth handles all aspects of product liability, mass tort, and toxic tort litigation and risk mitigation. She has substantial experience litigating product claims involving chemicals—including asbestos, talc, benzene, formaldehyde, and coal combustion residuals—as well as catastrophic failures of industrial machinery and consumer products. Her practice also focuses on strategic litigation avoidance and regulatory compliance, including pre- and post-market risk analysis of products and manufacturing and design processes. Elizabeth routinely reviews her clients’ safety and regulatory compliance programs, counseling them on ways to reduce product liability, consumer protection, and regulatory risk. She represents a broad spectrum of major corporate clients, with a special focus on the retail and chemical industries.

While in law school at the University of Virginia, Elizabeth was selected as a Dillard Fellow in Legal Research and Writing. She served as the senior Dillard Fellow for the legal writing program during her final year.

Elizabeth is the co-chair of the Firm’s Richmond summer associate program. She also maintains an active pro bono practice, including providing pro bono representation for clients served by the Virginia Holistic Justice Initiative.

Relevant Experience

• Represents multiple Fortune 500 companies in mass tort and product liability litigation in jurisdictions throughout the United States.
• Substantial experience briefing and leveraging jurisdictional-based defenses and strategies for corporate clients, including franchisors.
• Provides strategic litigation risk analysis for product manufacturers and retailers, including guidance on potential risks of product or manufacturing changes, labeling and warnings, regulatory compliance programs and policies, investigations, litigation avoidance, and product failure risk management/crisis response.
• Counsels companies regarding “best practices” programs and policies designed to avoid litigation risk associated with the Toxic Substances Control Act (“TSCA”), the Consumer Product Safety Act (“CPSA”), the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (“CPSIA”), the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (“FIFRA”), Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (“FDA Act”), and other federal and state regulatory schemes.
• Represents a large retailer in all areas of product liability risk advice, including development of required warning labels, review of instruction manuals, warranty language, safety-related messaging, and development of proprietary product safety testing protocols.
• Represented a major franchisor in its commercial launch of its proprietary pesticide product on a leading e-retailer platform, including provision of general product risk advice and review of product labeling, safety data sheets, technical data sheets, and other product literature to ensure compliance with regulations and platform requirements.
• Defends retailers against claims involving claims of false or misleading product labeling.

Bar Admissions

Education
JD, University of Virginia School of Law, Dillard Fellow in Legal Research and Writing, Articles Editor, Virginia Journal of International Law, 2015BA, Political Science, Duke University, Robert S. Rankin American Government Award for Leadership and Academic Achievement, 2012