Bart H. Williams

Williams heads Proskauer’s Los Angeles office and is a member of the firm’s executive committee.

In mid-July he described his office as “kind of back in action. Lawyers come in if they want, and we have a skeleton staff on hand. We’re looking to September for a full return. It remains a fluid situation.”

Williams was prepping for a July jury trial as lead defense counsel for Monsanto Co. and its parent company Bayer AG over claims that Monsanto’s weedkiller RoundUp caused non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in a woman who used it in her back yard. Stephens v. Monsanto Co., CIVSB2104801 (San Bernardino Co. Super. Ct., filed Aug. 4, 2020).

“This is a preference case based on the health of the plaintiff,” Williams said, explaining that the judge had advanced the trial date. “We’re fine with that. We’re certainly compassionate about anybody who has cancer.”

He predicted the trial will be a challenge, though he has a defense argument based on the plaintiff’s changed account of her use of RoundUp. “She said she had bought 14 bottles over 14 years—which is not that much—but then just as we were about to lock her story in she and members of her family suddenly remembered that she has used the product for 32 years. A pretty dramatic change.”

As the legal landscape shifts for student-athletes following the U.S. Supreme Court’s OK in June of education-related benefits for college players, Williams remains at the center of the litigation. In the high court case, it was Williams, representing the so-called “Power 5 Conferences,” who at the trial level persuaded U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken of Oakland to limit compensation to relatively modest payments.

Now Williams represents the Pac 12 in an additional antitrust class action challenge. House v. NCAA, 4:20-cv-03919 (N.D. Cal., filed June 15, 2020).

In other major matters, Williams represents Mattel Inc. as lead counsel in 25 separate product liability wrongful death cases in Delaware and California state courts related to the company’s Fisher Price Rock-n-Play Sleeper. “Sadly, parents ignored label warnings,” he said in briefly describing the defense position.

And he is defending a health care company against claims by 17,000 plaintiffs that its HIV prevention and treatment drugs failed adequately to warn about potential side effects. Holley v. Gilead Sciences Inc., 4:18-cv-06972 (N.D. Cal., filed Nov 16, 2018).

“We have a super defense; this is a hindsight type case,” he said. “You are saving the lives of people who would have perished.”

- John Roemer