Morty Dubin (from left), Kathy O'Connor, John Ewald and Kristen Fournier, King & Spalding. (Courtesy photos)

King & Spalding has brought on a four-partner mass tort group from Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe in New York.

The litigation partners Morton Dubin, John Ewald, Kristen Fournier and Kathy O'Connor—joined King & Spalding on Saturday. The Atlanta-based firm has one of the largest mass-tort practices in the country.

The Orrick partners share clients with King & Spalding, notably Johnson & Johnson and Dow, and have co-counseled on mass tort cases with the firm for more than a decade, said Andy Bayman, who leads King & Spalding's trial and global disputes practice.

"This is a premier group representing some major clients whom we share," said Bayman, adding the partners also have significant first-chair trial experience. "It would be hard to find a group that would have better synergies with our existing practice than this one. They are trial lawyers, and we are a trial law firm."

Dubin was lead counsel for Johnson & Johnson's defense team in one shared case, Herford v. Johnson & Johnson, with King & Spalding's Alex Calfo and Sharla Frost of Tucker Ellis, that Courthouse View Network named its top defense verdict of 2017.

The case was the first lawsuit in the country to go to trial over claims that the company's talc-based products, including baby powder, contained asbestos that caused the plaintiffs mesothelioma. A Los Angeles jury handed down a defense verdict after a monthlong trial in Los Angeles Superior Court. Johnson & Johnson faces numerous similar asbestos-related cases nationally as well as thousands of separate lawsuits alleging its talcum powder products cause ovarian cancer.

Dubin, who spent 22 years at Orrick, said leaving the firm "was very emotional for me because I'd been there so long." But he called King & Spalding's product liability and mass tort practice a "natural fit" for his team.

"The firm has one of the best mass tort practices in the U.S. with a long and distinguished history of providing cutting-edge trial representation to some of the biggest names in pharma and healthcare," he said.

Dubin, who's been in practice for 24 years, said he started first-chairing product liability trials almost 20 years ago. He and the other Orrick partners, who all have 15 or more years experience, have practiced together for many years. Ewald had spent his 18-year legal career at Orrick, and Fournier had been there 15 years. O'Connor, who has also worked in-house at Merck, had been at Orrick for four years, joining from Weil, Gotshal & Manges.

Dubin said King & Spalding's collaborative culture was important to his team. "We really feel we are going to a place where we can build a great home."

Mass tort defense is one of King & Spalding's core practices and one of its best known. The team from Orrick further strengthens King & Spalding's trial bench in New York, Bayman said, after his firm in 2017 landed a four partner mass tort and products liability team in New York led by John Hooper from Reed Smith.

Bayman said King & Spalding also has mass tort lawyers in its Atlanta headquarters, Chicago, Houston, Austin, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Washington, D.C.

"We've been doing mass tort product liability work since the 1960s," Bayman said, including tobacco, automotive, pharma and medical device cases. "It's one of our largest, best-branded practices."

King & Spalding's latest partner additions are "people we've known and worked with for years, so there's a cultural fit," Bayman said. "We know them, we like them, we work well with them, so the integration should be seamless."