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Partner
Litigation & Intellectual Property Practice
Richmond
(804) 788-8446 Phone
(804) 343-4540 Fax
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| Practices |
Employee Benefits
Litigation
Environmental
Litigation & Toxic
Torts
Litigation
National Business
Tort and Product
Liability
Pipeline
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Over 30 years experience in all aspects of civil litigation, both state and federal, at the trial and appellate levels, with particular focus on complex toxic tort and product liability litigation. Other areas of practice include premises liability and other personal injury litigation, commercial disputes, business torts and valuation litigation. Co-chair of Hunton & Williams National Business Tort and Product Liability Practice Groups.
Relevant Experience 
- Represented numerous corporate clients in cases involving dozens of trials, evidentiary hearings, mediations and arbitrations, including over 25 jury trials, some lasting several months.
- Roughly 50% of practice since the mid-1980s has been the defense of complex product liability and toxic tort litigation. Examples include:
- Currently representing a gasoline refiner in nearly sixty cases nationwide alleging that gasoline with the additive MTBE is a defective product.
- Currently representing a large wood products company as national counsel in product liability claims arising from the sale of pressure treated wood
- Defended a manufacturer of lead antiknock additives against claims that children were poisoned from the past use of leaded gasoline
- Represented a chemical company in defending approximately 660 personal injury and property damage claims arising out of arsenic contamination in a residential area adjoining a pesticide manufacturing plant in Georgia
- Represented a joint defense group of approximately 30 Fortune 500 companies at the end of nine years of class action litigation arising out of an oil recycling facility in Louisiana
- Defended a waste company against approximately 650 personal injury and property damage claims arising out of contamination of drinking water with vinyl chloride and other solvents from a sanitary landfill in Florida
- Defended a target defendant in approximately 2500 personal injury and property damage claims arising out of dioxin contamination in Times Beach, Missouri.
- Remainder of practice includes a diverse array of cases. Recent examples include:
- Prosecuted a trade secrets and breach of employment agreement case involving an important invention for a Fortune 500 client
- Prosecuted a trademark infringement action for a large nonprofit client for internet domain name piracy
- Prosecuted property tax refund litigation for Virginia's largest manufacturer relating to a shipyard valued at over $500 million
- Represented Virginia's Governor-elect (1989) and Democratic candidate for Attorney General (2005) in the only statewide election recounts in Virginia history.
Background
- Law Clerk, Hon. Robert R. Merhige, Jr., United States District Court, Eastern District of Virginia, 1972–73
Membership
- Permanent Member, Fourth Circuit Judicial Conference
- Chairman, Boyd-Graves Conference (1999-2001)
- Admitted to practice: First, Fourth, Fifth and Eleventh Circuits and U.S. Tax Court
Awards and Professional Recognition
- Member, Virginia Law Foundation
- 2005 BTI Client Service All-Star
- Chambers USA, America’s Leading Lawyers for Business (Commercial Litigation) 2004-2005
- The Best Lawyers in America for Business Litigation Law, 2005-2006
- Virginia Business Magazine, "Legal Elite" in 2001, 2002 (best civil litigators in Virginia)
- Achieved the highest rating in Martindale-Hubbell
Education - J.D., University of Virginia School of Law, Order of the Coif; Virginia Law Review, 1972
- B.A., Davidson College, 1969
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Joseph Kearfott
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