Law360 interviewed Blackwell Burke P.A. attorney Brendan M. Kenny for a recent article discussing the U.S. Supreme Court’s denial of tobacco companies’ certiorari petitions to challenge plaintiff-friendly findings in the massive Engle personal injury litigation in Florida. Tobacco companies sought to challenge the Florida Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in 2006 that decertified a class of 700,000 smokers but allowed them to sue the companies individually using the Engle jury’s eight liability findings, including that smoking cigarettes causes certain diseases and that the tobacco companies hid the dangers of smoking. Mr. Kenny explained that tobacco companies may attempt to advance the same argument in other states that they raised in their petition for certiorari: that allowing the Engle jury’s “generic” findings about cigarette smoking to apply in thousands of cases violates their due process rights. The full article is available to Law360 subscribers here (http://www.law360.com/articles/548476/high-court-s-denial-spurs-big-tobacco-to-look-beyond-engle).
Brendan M. Kenny is the founder of the Twin Cities E-Discovery Forum and a member of the Seventh Circuit Electronic Discovery Pilot Program’s National Outreach Committee. He was named an “Up & Coming Attorney” by Minnesota Lawyer in 2013. The recognition highlights those lawyers within their first 10 years of practice who have already distinguished themselves by their achievements. Before joining Blackwell Burke P.A., Mr. Kenny was a Deputy Attorney General in the California Attorney General’s Office in San Francisco where he gained first-chair trial experience. Since joining Blackwell Burke, Mr. Kenny has focused his practice on toxic tort, products liability, and other complex litigation.
Blackwell Burke P.A., a litigation and trial boutique in Minneapolis, Minnesota, serves as national trial and litigation counsel for numerous Fortune 500 companies. The firm is recommended by Benchmark Litigation and honored as a “Go-To Law Firm” for the Top 500 Companies by Corporate Counsel magazine. The firm has represented corporate clients in practically every jurisdiction in the country, as well as several foreign countries.
For more information about Blackwell Burke P.A. or Mr. Kenny, please contact Kandy Branch at 612-343-3235.