Andrew T. Bayman (Andy)

• Acting as lead counsel for Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, Inc. and as one of four Defense Co-Leads in personal injury and class actions in the In Re Zantac MDL with more than 100,000 claimants in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida, as well as in various state courts and States Attorneys General actions.
• Acting as co-lead counsel for The Renco Group, Inc. and Doe Run Resources Corp. in connection with thousands of lawsuits pending in the E.D. Missouri (St. Louis) filed on behalf of Peruvian children allegedly injured from exposure to lead and other contaminants at a metallurgical facility in La Oroya, Peru.
• Acting as lead counsel for ride share company in defending against claims of driver assault.
• Successfully represented 3M in defeating two Combat Arms Earplugs plaintiffs’ lawsuit to enjoin 3M from issuing dividends and spinning off its healthcare business.
• Represented pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline (“GSK”) in the first lawsuit ever tried under a theory of “Innovator Liability” in which the plaintiff alleged that GSK was liable for the suicide of her late husband, the Chair of a global law firm’s Corporate and Securities practice following his ingestion of a generic version of GSK’s antidepressant Paxil®. The lawsuit alleged that the company had been negligent in its failure to warn of an increased risk of suicidal behavior in adult patients over the age of twenty-four. The United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois denied GSK’s motion for summary judgment and the case proceeded to trial with the plaintiff seeking to hold GSK liable for injuries stemming from the ingestion of a product it did not manufacture. The case was the subject of extensive media coverage. After a five-week jury trial of which three days were spent deliberating, the jury came back with a verdict for the plaintiff in the amount of $3 million. This award was significantly less than the $39 million in damages that the plaintiff requested and less than the $14 million in economic losses that was put in front of the jury. The Seventh Circuit reversed the verdict and rendered judgment in GSK’s favor on federal preemption grounds in August 2018.
• Obtained a complete defense verdict for Merck in the first bellwether trial in an MDL in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey (Glynn v. Merck), in a case alleging that Merck’s osteoporosis drug Fosamax® caused the plaintiff’s atypical femur fracture. Following that trial, Judge Joel Pisano entered an Order to Show Cause dismissing Glynn and hundreds of other Fosamax® atypical femur fracture cases in the MDL on federal preemption grounds. Merck ultimately prevailed on preemption in that case in the United States Supreme Court. Merck v. Albrecht, 139 S.Ct. 1668 (2019).
• Serves as lead, national coordinating counsel and trial counsel in product liability litigation involving allegations that GSK’s antidepressant, Paxil®, causes birth defects. In this role, which has spanned more than a decade and involves emotionally charged cases that are brand and business threatening, Andy and the King & Spalding team have defeated certification of both state and national classes of Paxil® consumers on consumer fraud, medical monitoring and personal injury allegations.
• Acted as trial counsel for an international medical device company in female pelvic mesh litigation.
• Acting as lead counsel for a Fortune 50 company in an MDL pending in the Northern District of California alleging that it marketed and sold purportedly defective JUUL e­ cigarette products, including to minors.
• Achieved a motion to dismiss from the U.S. District Court of South Carolina as lead counsel for Allergan in a case alleging lip lesions and Lyme-disease-like symptoms after receiving injections with Allergan’s product Juviderm®, a Class III medical device.
• Acted as Lead trial counsel or second chair trial counsel in 16 automotive product liability cases and in a dealership termination trial in the federal and state courts in New York, New Jersey, Georgia, Mississippi and Alabama.
• Served as national coordinating counsel for a large consumer healthcare product manufacturer and has supervised a national document collection and company-wide interviews for that client.
• Represented a major medical device manufacturer as national coordinating counsel and lead trial counsel in product liability class actions and individual lawsuits involving a recalled medical device in which death or serious injury was alleged.
• Achieved a defense verdict for Nissan as trial counsel in the first-ever case tried involving an alleged defect in a motorized seatbelt system (Smith-Green v. Nissan).
• Served as national trial counsel for Quest Diagnostics Incorporated, the country’s largest private clinical laboratory company, in lawsuits arising out of the interpretation of laboratory specimens.
• Acted as lead trial counsel in cases in Missouri and Ohio in which it was alleged that a misread Pap smear led to a delay in the diagnosis of cervical cancer and caused wrongful death or the loss of fertility.

Andy Bayman is a trial lawyer who represents pharmaceutical companies, medical device manufacturers, retailers, automotive manufacturers and other major companies in their most challenging and novel product liability and toxic tort cases. He has tried over 20 cases in state and federal courts, many of which are first of kind such as the first pharmaceutical products liability lawsuit ever tried under the theory of “Innovator Liability,” the first MDL bellwether trial involving an atypical femur fracture allegedly caused by Merck’s osteoporosis medicine, Fosamax® and, more recently, the first Zantac case to go to trial.

Andy is often called upon as coordinating and lead counsel on some of the most brand-threatening, high-profile crisis matters for major manufacturers, many of which are in MDLs.  He is lead counsel for Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, Inc. and one of four Defense Co-Leads in personal injury and class actions in the In Re Zantac MDL in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida and in coordinated state court proceedings in various states.

Andy has frequently been recognized for his leading practice including by being named as a Product Liability MVP by Law360 and in Chambers Nationwide and Legal 500. He is notably a fellow of the Litigation Counsel of America, an honorary society limited to less than .05% of U.S. lawyers.

In addition to his client work, Andy also is the Co-Chair of the firm’s new Product Liability and Mass Tort Practice Group.  He served for five years as the Practice Group Leader of King & Spalding’s former Trial & Global Disputes practice group, a diverse group of over 550 litigators in 22 offices globally. He also served three terms on King & Spalding's Policy Committee.