Arthur Fahlbusch is counsel in King & Spalding’s Atlanta office and a member of the firm’s E-Discovery Group. Mr. Fahlbusch is a commercial and product liability litigator with experience in all phases of litigation in state and federal courts. His practice focuses on discovery issues and the discovery of electronically stored information in complex litigation.
Mr. Fahlbusch has been providing legal advice concerning discovery in complex litigation for more than a dozen years. He regularly provides guidance on e-discovery practices and cost-effective repeatable processes to address e-discovery issues. Mr. Fahlbusch addressed e-discovery issues before that term gained widespread usage. He works with IT professionals regarding litigation support, email, and backup systems. He speaks on electronic discovery and privilege and is a member of e-discovery working groups of The Sedona Conference®. He has trained and supervised large discovery teams. Always seeking ways to reduce costs while increasing quality, Mr. Fahlbusch developed innovative techniques for preparing privilege logs that allow for more robust (and challenge resistant) entries at a lower overall cost. He has significant experience defending privilege and work product claims and addressing crime-fraud allegations.
Prior to joining King & Spalding in 2001, Mr. Fahlbusch practiced in New York for almost 15 years with Shea & Gould, Breed Abbott & Morgan and Chadbourne & Parke LLP. His practice included all phases of civil litigation in state and federal courts, including drafting and arguing motions and appeals, taking and defending depositions, and examining witnesses at trial. Drawing upon that experience and his substantial discovery experience, Mr. Fahlbusch seeks to counsel clients so that discovery issues do not overshadow the merits of the litigation.
His experience with large-scale complex discovery began in the mid-1990s while defending several cigarette manufacturers in the landmark Medicaid cost recovery actions brought by state attorneys general against the tobacco industry.
- Mr. Fahlbusch addressed various aspects of document discovery and supervised large teams of attorneys and legal support personnel in connection with the privilege review and production of more than three million pages of documents.
- He also supervised the preparation of more than 50,000 privilege log entries for different clients.
- He litigated various discovery issues, including privilege, work product and crime-fraud issues.
After joining King & Spalding in 2001, Mr. Fahlbusch assumed primary day-to-day responsibility for all discovery issues across the country in connection with King & Spalding’s role as National Discovery Counsel for the Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corporation. That included a well-publicized action brought by the federal government.
- Mr. Fahlbusch trained and supervised large discovery teams of attorneys, paralegals and IT professionals.
- He was responsible for discovery responses, document productions, and preparing defensible privilege logs in all cases throughout the country.
- He also litigated numerous discovery issues, drafted responses to numerous motions to compel, and developed strategy with case counsel and counsel for other defendants.
- Mr. Fahlbusch defended privilege claims for more than 1,000 documents and prepared briefs, affidavits, and related submissions totaling over 1,300 pages for in camera review.
- He addressed defensive discovery requests both in the pre-trial and trial contexts.
He had primary responsibility for defending privilege claims in various courts across the country for a major pharmaceutical company.
In the firm’s role as National Discovery Coordinating Counsel for a major financial institution, Mr. Fahlbusch is the primary contact. In that capacity, he regularly addresses various discovery issues.
- Mr. Fahlbusch provides legal advice to in-house and outside counsel concerning discovery issues, including the collection, preservation and production of electronically stored information under the amended Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.
- He regularly addresses form of production issues, “not reasonably accessible” electronically stored information, preparing for discovery conferences and drafting submissions regarding electronically stored information and other discovery issues. He has successfully opposed the restoration of backup tapes and motions for sanctions concerning, among other things, email productions.
- He also prepares company representatives for depositions concerning e-discovery issues and defends such depositions.
He is admitted to practice in New York and Georgia. He is also admitted to practice before the following federal courts: the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit; the U.S. District Courts for the Northern District of Georgia, the District of Columbia, the Southern, Eastern, Northern and Western of Districts of New York; and the U.S. Tax Court.
Mr. Fahlbusch received his J.D. from the Georgetown University Law Center in 1985 and graduated, magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, from Hofstra University in 1980. After graduating from law school, he served as a law clerk to the Honorable Truman A. Morrison, III of the District of Columbia Superior Court.
