Katharine R. Latimer

Working with the firm more than 30 years, Kate Latimer earned national recognition for her exceptional defense of complex litigation matters in federal and state courts in our clients’ most high-profile litigation. After retiring, she continued to serve for a number of years on the Legal Policy Advisory Board of the Washington Legal Foundation, the nation’s premier public-interest law firm and policy center committed to advancing America’s free-enterprise system.

Kate’s practice emphasized science and strategy in the defense of pharmaceutical and medical device products liability and toxic tort suits. She was a principal architect of the extraordinary effort which won the national Parlodel litigation—“the first significant products liability causation debate of the 21st century”—and pushed Daubert to the front of all serial litigation defense. Kate appeared in dozens of courts and defended cases brought by thousands of plaintiffs, helping our clients to pivotal, precedent-setting wins through myriad dispositive motions, lengthy evidentiary hearings, trials, and appeals, including a rare Daubert-based appellate win following a months-long mass tort trial. She retired after leading the celebrated defense of the expansive Aredia and Zometa litigation that had been coordinated in two multidistrict litigations and a New Jersey mass tort, first securing back-to-back trial wins in the initial bellwether cases. The National Law Journal profiled three of her many notable victories as top defense wins of the year:  Warren v. Sandoz Pharm. Corp. (1998); Glastetter v. Novartis Pharm. Corp. (2001); Crowson v. Davol, Inc. (2005).

Kate’s work for clients including General Electric, General Motors, Novartis Pharmaceuticals, Velsicol Chemical, Avon, and other corporate members of highly regulated industries, featured successful defenses of suits involving prescription and over-the-counter drugs, medical devices, cosmetics, welding rods, pesticides and herbicides, and manufacturing-use chemical compounds. She found ways to win while facing the gamut of liability theories, including fraud, conspiracy, and other intentional torts.

A regular speaker at seminars and conferences and often tapped for her editorial contributions, Prior to joining the firm, Kate was judicial clerk to the Hon. Johanna L. Fitzpatrick of the Nineteenth Judicial Circuit of Virginia (subsequently Chief Judge of the Virginia Court of Appeals).