It's time for the June installment of our Litigation Leaders series, featuring the litigation department heads of the nation's biggest law firms.

Geoffrey R. Garinther has headed Venable's litigation division since 2006. Aside from a stint as an assistant U.S. attorney in Maryland, he has spent his entire career at the firm, working for many years under the tutelage of former U.S. Attorney General Benjamin Civiletti. Based in Washington, D.C. and Maryland, Garinther has represented clients ranging from the Baltimore Ravens to MileOne Automotive to WellCare Health Plans.

Lit Daily:  Tell us a little about yourself—beyond what's in your law firm bio.  

Geoffrey R. Garinther: My wife and I met in perhaps the most boring place ever, a tax class at law school. Over about a one-month span two summers later, she took the bar exam while I finished a clerkship, we got married and went on a honeymoon, then moved into our first house and started working, she as a real estate lawyer and I as a trial lawyer. In the 35 years since then, we've done a lot—four grown children, lots of trials and real estate closings, even two near-death experiences—but we've never tried doing our own taxes.

Beyond family, I enjoy spending time with trial lawyers generally. Many of my closest friends are former prosecutors going back 32 years, when I started in the U.S. Attorney's Office in Maryland. We had offices in the courthouse then, which was a nice perk when you were in trial or just hoping to catch others in trial.  

For the past 20 years or so, I've chaired a liaison committee made up of judges and lawyers from our federal court community in Maryland who meet regularly to provide each other with feedback (which these days means we're talking a lot about coronavirus-related issues). The ability to fight hard for your clients but maintain a high level of civility with the lawyers you're up against and the judges you're in front of is especially important in times like these.

How big is your firm and where are most of your litigators concentrated geographically?

We have more than 800 lawyers handling matters all over the country while based in three primary geographic areas—Washington, D.C./Baltimore, New York, and California. Of those 800, nearly half are trial lawyers—commercial litigators, IP litigators, products lawyers, labor and employment lawyers, or, in my case, white collar defense lawyers. 

What areas of litigation does Venable specialize in? Has this evolved over the years? 

We love trying cases and believe we're sought after for our ability to litigate not just on paper but in the courtroom. We handle litigation related to commercial disputes, product liability and negligence, antitrust, employment, and intellectual property. Our IP practice is so large—doubled in size after our combination with Fitzpatrick Cella in 2018—that they have their own division in the firm, separate from non-IP litigators. We also have extensive experience handling both class and mass tort actions in federal and state courts.  

In what three areas of litigation do you have the deepest bench? (I know it's tempting to list more, but please just name three).

We are particularly well known for our defense of product liability mass torts in the life sciences industry, class action litigation related to both antitrust and consumer protection statutes, and complex commercial disputes of all stripes, often for clients in the entertainment industry. 

What do you see as hallmarks of your firm's litigators? What makes you different?

We really do enjoy trying cases, so much so that every other year we set aside 2-3 days to train our associates in trial and deposition sessions that allow our partners to serve as faculty, lecturers, and demonstrators, giving all of us a chance to get up on our feet and do what we love to do in an informal, non-judgmental setting.

As head of the department, what are some of your goals or priorities?

Almost every one of our goals is being affected by COVID-19, starting with the way in which we've responded as a firm. We think our obligations to our clients require a focus on providing the same level of service now and in whatever the new normal is, so rather than laying off large numbers, we chose early on to roll back everyone's compensation in the hope of keeping our team together.  

As trial lawyers, we're doing all we can to prepare for COVID-related litigation, but also to be ready for what litigation generally will look like. We're expecting less travel and much more use of Zoom and other technologies well beyond our return to the office. Taking and defending depositions remotely, for example, requires a somewhat different skill set, one that may come more naturally to younger lawyers who are accustomed to learning through screens.

How are you coping with the current economic downturn?

It's clear now that there'll be no VE-Day-like celebration, with everything opening up all at once. The return will be gradual, and different not just geographically—will New Yorkers be comfortable, pre-vaccine, taking trains and subways back to work?—but also based on personal factors like whether you're at a higher risk for COVID-19.  

So while we expect to have lawyers back in offices this summer, nothing remotely like our old normal is returning quickly, if ever. It's good to know that our disaster preparedness works, and that we can get by for a while working from home. I think WFH will become more common, but it's a poor substitute for what makes work life interesting. I think our lawyers can't wait until they're able to return, safely, to dealing with clients and colleagues in person. 

How many lateral lawyers have you hired in the last 12 months? What do you look for in lateral hires and where do your laterals tend to come from? 

In the last year or so we have added seven new lateral partners, including a team of nine lawyers in our LA office that bolsters our entertainment and media litigation bench on the West Coast, plus new partners in San Francisco and D.C. who grow our commercial strength, with expertise in the commercial real estate and financial services areas.

What were some of your firm's biggest in-court wins in the past year, and can you cite tactics that exemplify your firm's approach to success?

Part of the calculus about whether to settle rather than go to trial includes your estimate of whether the other side is not just ready to try its case, but is leaning into it. So victories can take different forms, but the following are three from the past year or so that we're particularly proud of for their significance:

We obtained the rare outcome of having a dismissal of a case in our client's favor affirmed by the Third Circuit not once but twice, in a products liability matter involving allegations of injury from a vaccine. The appellate court affirmed the district court's holding that the case could not be revived under Rule 60(b)(6) after it had previously affirmed the district court's decision to dismiss the case on limitations grounds.

After seven days of trial and less than three hours of deliberation, a jury in federal court in St. Louis returned a total defense verdict in favor of a physician Venable represented. The plaintiffs' claims, brought under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, were based on alleged unsolicited telephone calls recorded by former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee to promote a movie, Last Ounce of Courage, financed in substantial part by our client. Other defendants, including Huckabee, were dismissed from the case or had their claims resolved by the court, leaving our client to face the jury verdict alone. Because the case was a class action, the damages were estimated to be $1.6 billion. The verdict, which was affirmed by the Eighth Circuit, ended more than four years of litigation.

A team of Venable attorneys obtained summary judgment in a California state court action alleging disability discrimination and derivative causes of action against Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. A former employee alleged that Cedars-Sinai discriminated when it terminated her employment for refusing to receive a flu vaccine (mandatory for all Cedars-Sinai personnel unable to establish a recognized medical exemption). The trial court granted Cedars-Sinai's request for judicial notice of CDC statistics establishing the efficacy and safety of vaccination against the influenza virus, and, separately, Cedars-Sinai demonstrated (via discovery admissions) that plaintiff did not possess a medically cognizable contraindication to the influenza vaccine.  

Presented with additional evidence of Cedars-Sinai's highly vulnerable patient population (and plaintiff's contact with that population), the court determined that plaintiff: (a) could not present a triable issue of material fact showing that she had a disability as defined by statute; (b) had not met her burden to show that Cedars-Sinai intentionally discriminated against her; and (c) failed to present any evidence to rebut Cedars-Sinai's showing that it could not have accommodated her refusal to adhere to its vaccination policy.

Looking ahead, what's on your plate? Big cases? Plans to build or expand?

For trial lawyers, how soon we'll be able to seat jurors in courtrooms is a big question. I had a federal court trial scheduled for mid-May, but of course, we lost that date.  A few days ago, the judge wrote to counsel asking if we'd consent to a bench trial, and if so, to conducting it over Zoom by Government, because she thinks it's unlikely we'll be able to reschedule a jury trial in 2020.  

That choice—get to trial sooner, but in a bench rather than jury trial—will be an interesting decision for trial lawyers and their clients. Typical plaintiffs might be happy to get to trial sooner; typical defendants might prefer to have a judge as finder of fact rather than a jury. 

Even when we can bring jurors into the courtroom, initially they will almost certainly be wearing face masks, along with everyone else in the courtroom. Seeing the reactions of jurors to how the testimony and arguments are playing out has always been an important part of trials.  And of course judging whether witnesses are truthful depends greatly on being able to see their faces when answering questions. Some studies suggest that's actually more significant to some jurors than the words coming from the witness. It won't be long before we start seeing this in action—some are expecting that any trial between now and the development of a vaccine will be conducted wearing masks.

Beyond the issues of how cases will be decided in the near term, we're all expecting that the trillions of dollars the government has flooded into the economy will be fueling civil and criminal cases for years to come. We feel well suited for those matters, because our strengths for decades have included investigations and defense (where we were led for many years by former U.S. Attorney General Ben Civiletti), particularly in financial services matters.

To see our  prior Litigation Leaders profiles, click here.