The Product Liability Group brings together the expertise from its commercial litigation and insurance litigation teams. The Group acts for manufacturers, suppliers, retailers, insurers and reinsurers in domestic and international matters relating to product liability. In addition to having wide experience in both the litigation and arbitration of disputes arising from a variety of products, the Group also offers advice on how clients can minimise their exposure to potential claims.

The Product Liability Group deals with all aspects of the legal issues which arise in this field, including the initial investigation of the product in question, strategic advice on handling such issues (often across several disputes, sometimes in different jurisdictions), the handling of High Court litigation or arbitration proceedings and settlement issues.

Our experience has ranged across a wide variety of products including drugs, chemicals, automobiles, boilers and asbestos. We have developed a particular expertise in handling product liability issues arising from railway accidents, oil pipelines, engineering disputes and traditional manufactured products. Our asbestos experience is extensive.

Some examples of our recent work are:

• co-ordinating the defence (on the instructions of reinsurers) of all asbestos claims in the UK against the T&N group of companies (the UK's largest producer and distributor of asbestos products), as well as being involved in co-ordinating the defence in a number of other countries, including the US. T&N faces several hundred thousand claims - including many thousands in the UK - and worldwide liabilities estimated at over £1 billion
  
• acting for component manufacturers in connection with two significant recent UK rail crashes. In both cases we played a significant role in establishing the process of manufacture in order to be able to demonstrate to the relevant authorities that the product in question had been properly manufactured to specification. We have also acted over the last few years for GNER in litigation arising out of a series of train derailments, successfully bringing proceedings against the company responsible for the Sandy derailment