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In re Carey11/26/2002
ey as a member of Charles Newman's Chrysler team. As a new associate, Danis' involvement with the Chrysler class action litigation was less extensive than Carey's. However, as a member of the team, Danis was privy to all aspects of the Chrysler representation. Danis billed 513.5 hours to Chrysler from January 1992 through December 1995.
Newman would circulate information on the widest possible basis to every member of the Thompson & Mitchell team involved in representation of Chrysler. Carey was the primary associate on four different Chrysler class action cases. Charles Newman testified:
John [Carey] was totally immersed in that case [Osley], along with me, and played the same role that I played in many respects. And that obviously involved . . . determining the legal issues that the case presented. It also involved analyzing the jurisdiction . . . .
He was also involved with me and others in massing the facts relevant to the claims that were asserted, and that involved contacting and principally working with the personnel in the office of the general counsel at Chrysler Corporation.
Newman further testified that in the other three cases, Carey had "a similar role with a few additional aspects."
Danis was not involved in Osley, but did participate in the other three cases. Danis was involved in the lower level associate functions, but worked extensively with both Newman and Carey. Danis worked principally on drafting discovery responses and obtaining information from Chrysler to respond to discovery requests.
The component parts involved in the class action lawsuits Carey and Danis defended while with Thompson & Mitchell were Renault heater coils and Chrysler minivan door latches. Charles Newman and other Chrysler attorneys, William McLellan and Lewis Goldfarb, each stressed, however, that the actual defective component was not materially important in this type of class action lawsuit. Goldfarb testified: The products at issue in class actions are almost irrelevant to how we go about defending class actions. There's almost an identity of process in terms of how we defend class actions, regardless of the nature of the component involved.
Product-related class action , particularly those that follow on the heels of a government investigation, are virtually identical in the way the company handles them. The nature of the component involved is almost irrelevant to these cases because they never go to trial. We're always dealing with the government, that investigation relates to the ongoing class action case. And the class action strategy is almost independent in some respects of the nature of the component involved.
These three Chrysler attorneys also testified that respondents Carey and Danis were privy to a wealth of information that would be useful to them in prosecuting a product-related class action against Chrysler. Newman testified that Carey and Danis learned Chrysler's strategy in defending minivan product liability class action suits: Respondents [were] present during meetings with in-house Chrysler counsel when there was a discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of various Chrysler employees . . . with non-lawyer Chrysler employees; for example, expert witnesses.
We would talk with the client about other pending litigation alleging a similar product or defect . . . . So we would talk to the attorneys at Chrysler about their defense of those cases, what factual defenses were being developed and implemented, what expert witnesses, if any, they were working with there. The legal strategies in those cases, the legal defenses in those cases. Determine their applicability, determine
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