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Experience and Background
Hope S. Freiwald served as the lead defense liaison counsel in all New Jersey-coordinated Vioxx cases. She was part of Merck's national expert team and led Merck's team developing medical experts for New Jersey Vioxx trials.
Since 2005, she was trial counsel to Merck in the Philadelphia and New Jersey Vioxx litigation and successfully defended the company in several cases, including Hermans v. Merck involving the sudden cardiac death of a 44-year-old man. Tried in a novel two-phased procedure, the jury found that Merck had adequately warned of the potential risks of Vioxx, thereby cutting off the claim without a second-phase trial on proximate cause. Ms. Freiwald was also part of the trial team in Humeston v. Merck, the first defense victory scored by the company.
In 2004, she was lead trial counsel for GlaxoSmithKline ("GSK") and helped win a defense verdict for GSK in Pauley v. Bayer et al., a Baycol case tried in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas. She also was co-trial counsel for GSK in another Baycol personal injury case that settled after jury selection on terms highly favorable to defendants. In the Baycol litigation, Ms. Freiwald also served as part of GSK's national Baycol defense team, where she headed GSK's science team and coordinated GSK's defense of several thousand cases filed in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas.
Currently, Ms. Freiwald is the head of the science/expert team for one of Dechert's clients defending anti-psychotic product liability litigation. In other years, she was trial counsel to a manufacturer of nutritional supplements where she led the expert team and participated in the Daubert hearing that ultimately paved the way for a global mediation of claims. She also was part of national defense teams in litigation against manufacturers of blood derivatives, acne medications, anti-hypertensives, heart valves, and latex gloves. Ms. Freiwald regularly counsels in mass tort/product liability risk reduction, particularly focusing on issues of co-promotion and in-licensing agreements as well as emerging injury and liability theories. She has worked extensively on pre-litigation dispute resolution, including resolution of putative mass tort claims in Europe. She has advised clients appearing before government review panels with regard to their prescription medications and advised them in lobbying efforts concerning compensation fund legislation. She has appeared on TV discussing product liability issues facing pharmaceutical and consumer goods manufactures and has served as a media spokesperson for several clients faced with high-stakes mass tort litigation. In its 2008 edition, Chambers USA, a referral guide to leading lawyers in the United States, highlighted Ms. Freiwald's work in products liability. She has also been listed in Best Lawyers in America.
Education
Brown University, A.B., magna cum laude, 1986
Columbia Law School, J.D., 1990
Clerkship, the Honorable Jan E. DuBois of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania
Publications and Lectures
Ms. Freiwald is a frequent author and lecturer on topics related to pharmaceutical mass tort litigation, including the liability risks of co-promotion agreements and marketing-based liability claims. She is a member of the Defense Research Institute.
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