Elizabeth J. Cabraser

The first time Cabraser was appointed by a court to a leadership position in a class action, she was “an upstart and a challenger” just a couple of years out of law school. Now, she is a leader among the plaintiffs’ mass tort bar who for decades has assumed top posts in dozens of class actions and multidistrict litigations.

She holds leadership posts in litigation over the national prescription opiate crisis, FiatChrysler diesel emissions, pricing of generic prescription drugs, California wildfires, Google Street View data gathering and Takata airbags, among others.

But Cabraser also would like to see younger and more diverse attorneys given leadership roles in mass tort cases, and she strongly supports the move by some federal judges to do just that. “My big campaign is for greater diversity in leadership in complex litigation,” she said.

Several younger partners in her firm do hold such posts in big cases, for instance Lexi Hazam in the Southern California wildfire litigation and Sara London in the MDL over Juul e-cigarettes.

“I’m really focused now on building our firm for the future and transitioning active leadership roles to our younger partners,” Cabraser said.

What is keeping her busiest currently is the opioid litigation, which she describes as “the most complex civil litigation in history by the sheer number of defendants, the sheer impact of the opioids epidemic and the different types of plaintiffs involved.” National Prescription Opiate Litigation, 1:17-md-02804 (N.D. Ohio, trans. order Dec. 12, 2017)

Cabraser said she advised her many clients to accept the now approved settlement with Purdue Pharma, despite concerns that its owners, the Sackler family, are not contributing enough.

In July, she helped achieve a $26 billion settlement with three major opioid distributors and a manufacturer on behalf of state and local governments.

And she is working on a new, related case against an advertising agency for many of the opioid makers. In Re: McKinsey & Co. Inc. National Prescription Opiate Consultant Litigation, 3:21-md-02996 (N.D. Cal., filed June 8, 2021).

“I love the work. I care very much about the plaintiffs work that I do,” she said. “I never want to leave, and I never would leave to do anything else full time.”

She does, however, teach part time. Cabraser co-teaches a class on multidistrict litigation at UC Berkeley School of Law — a course she all but invented a half-dozen years ago.

— Don DeBenedictis