Crossing Damages Experts: Economists, Life-Care Planners, and Treating Physicians

Christopher G. Campbell, Partner | DLA Piper

Christopher G. Campbell is the co-author of Expert Witnesses: Products Liability Cases (Thomson Reuters 2d ed. 2012), an indepth guide to expert witness development across pharmaceutical, toxic tort, automotive, industrial, and consumer product matters, and he regularly speaks and writes on expert witnesses, trial tactics, the attorney-client privilege, and pharmacovigilance. A Partner at DLA Piper and Chair of the firm’s Product Liability and Mass Torts group, he brings 25 years of experience in all phases of mass tort, class action, and product liability complex commercial litigation, including trying cases and arguing appeals for global companies across industries.

• Education & Credentials

Mr. Campbell earned his J.D. from Harvard Law School in 2000, where he served on the Harvard Negotiation Law Review, the International Law Journal, and the Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review and competed in the Ames Moot Court Competition. He received a B.S. in Philosophy and English from Austin Peay State University in 1997 and was named its Outstanding Young Alumnus of the Year in 2002. He is admitted to practice in Georgia and New York.

• Recognition & Leadership

Mr. Campbell chairs DLA Piper’s Product Liability and Mass Torts group, named Practice Group of the Year in 2025 by Law360, ranked Band 1 by Chambers, and ranked Tier 1 by The Legal 500, and he co-chairs the firm’s Product Liability, Mass Torts & Class Actions group. He is ranked in Chambers USA for Nationwide Product Liability & Mass Torts, recognized by The Legal 500 as a leading lawyer in pharmaceutical and medical device defense, selected for inclusion in Best Lawyers for mass tort and product liability litigation, and recognized by Forbes as best in state in Georgia, the only product liability lawyer to receive that recognition in the state. His article on hindsight bias in failure-to-warn cases received the Defense Research Institute’s G. Duffield Smith Outstanding Publication Award.

• Professional Involvement

Mr. Campbell speaks frequently on evidence and expert issues, including as speaker for the myLawCLE program Digital Evidence at Trial, addressing impeachment strategy and admissibility before stepping into the courtroom, and as presenter on causation experts in products liability cases and admissibility takeaways from the Tylenol multidistrict litigation. He serves as Publications Vice-Chair of the DRI Drug and Medical Device Steering Committee, served on the Product Liability Editorial Board of Law360, and is a member of the American Bar Association, the New York State Bar Association, the Georgia Bar Association, the Defense Research Institute, Lawyers for Civil Justice, and the US Chamber of Commerce.

• Experience

Mr. Campbell is lead global strategic and coordination attorney for Bayer in a mass tort involving a contraceptive medical device spanning five continents and more than a dozen countries, where the defense holds a near 100 percent success rate with more than 150 favorable findings by trial courts, appellate courts, and court-appointed experts, including a complete defense judgment after a class action trial in the Supreme Court of Victoria in Australia. He is national trial attorney for Hankook Tire and has tried the company’s product liability cases in Arkansas, Missouri, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia. He led Bayer’s defense of the multidistrict litigation involving phenylephrine to a complete dismissal on federal preemption grounds, represents Pfizer in the Depo-Provera multidistrict litigation, and represents Novo Nordisk in a product liability litigation involving the alleged sharing of insulin pens by a Connecticut hospital. He also serves as lead national, strategic, and trial attorney in product liability, toxic tort, and class action matters across the automotive, industrial equipment, pharmaceutical, medical device, healthcare, consumer goods, and safety equipment industries.

Joshua Gardner, Partner | DLA Piper

Joshua Gardner is a first-chair trial and appellate lawyer at DLA Piper who teaches trial advocacy, evidence, depositions, and civil litigation courses and devotes significant time to training lawyers in witness preparation and examination strategy. Over more than two decades in private practice and at the U.S. Department of Justice, he has litigated some of the nation’s most consequential constitutional, administrative, commercial, and regulatory disputes, led trial teams through more than a dozen bench and jury trials, examined and cross-examined a broad array of fact and expert witnesses, and managed litigation involving billions of dollars in claimed damages.

• Education & Credentials

Mr. Gardner earned his J.D. from The George Washington University Law School and his B.A. from the University of Central Florida. He is admitted in the District of Columbia and Florida and before the Supreme Court of the United States, the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the District of Columbia, Second, Eleventh, and Federal Circuits, the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, and federal district and bankruptcy courts in the District of Columbia and Florida. He served as a law clerk to Justice Barbara J. Pariente of the Florida Supreme Court from 2000 to 2002.

• Recognition & Leadership

Mr. Gardner received the Presidential Rank Award from the United States Government in 2024, Special Commendation Awards from the Department of Justice Civil Division in 2010 and 2024, the Department of Justice Training and Professional Development Award in 2015, a Department of Justice Special Commendation Award in 2014, an Honors Award from the United States Department of Agriculture in 2011, and the Attorney General’s John Marshall Award for the Trial of Litigation in 2007. He previously served as Acting Chief of Staff of the Department of Justice’s Office of Legislative Affairs.

• Professional Involvement

Mr. Gardner presented the myLawCLE program Presenting and Objecting to Evidence in Legal Proceedings, covering evidence basics, pretrial motions, expert testimony, and presentation, in 2026. He serves as a Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School, a Professorial Lecturer in Law at The George Washington University Law School, where he has taught pretrial advocacy, government lawyering, and legal writing and oral advocacy since 2004, and an instructor at the Department of Justice National Advocacy Center, where he has taught trial advocacy, evidence, deposition, and civil litigation courses since 2008. He advises Lawyers for Civil Justice on federal and state rulemaking initiatives and civil justice reform matters, and he worked with the Advisory Committee on Civil Rules alongside law professors and practitioners in developing amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. His recent writing addresses corporate testimony in Bloomberg Law and the civil procedure rules amendment process in Law360.

• Experience

At DLA Piper, Mr. Gardner represents corporations, financial institutions, healthcare organizations, energy companies, and trade associations in complex commercial litigation, toxic tort matters, constitutional and regulatory challenges, disputes involving federal agencies, and appeals, including matters before the Supreme Court. At the Department of Justice, he served as lead attorney in First Amendment litigation over constitutional limits on federal government communications with social media companies, as lead attorney in litigation arising from what was then the largest federal government data breach in history, and as lead trial attorney in multiple trials challenging the inclusion of a citizenship question on the 2020 census. He was co-lead trial attorney in a nine-week class action trial arising from the federal government’s rescue of AIG during the 2008 financial crisis, involving approximately 40 billion dollars in claimed damages, and lead or co-attorney in nine trials concerning spent nuclear fuel claims against the Department of Energy. He has prepared senior government officials for congressional testimony, defended depositions involving cabinet-level agency leadership, and worked extensively with fact and expert witnesses in complex litigation.

Marie Bussey-Garza, Of Counsel | DLA Piper

Marie Bussey-Garza is a litigator at DLA Piper with a nationwide practice in class actions, high-stakes government-facing litigation, and appellate advocacy, whose trial work includes a total defense victory and a multimillion-dollar fee award for a publisher falsely accused of deceptive sales practices by the Federal Trade Commission and the Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General. Her practice includes defending complex actions alleging deceptive business practices, consumer protection violations, defamation, and related constitutional claims, as well as pursuing affirmative statutory and constitutional challenges to state legislative action, and she has represented clients in practice-changing appellate disputes with implications for a broad range of industries.

• Education & Credentials

Ms. Bussey-Garza earned her J.D. summa cum laude from the Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law, where she served as Managing Editor of the Villanova Law Review’s Tolle Lege, along with a B.S. from California State University, Fresno, and a B.B.A. with highest honors from the McCombs School of Business at The University of Texas at Austin. She is admitted in Pennsylvania and Texas and before the Supreme Court of the United States, the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Third, Fourth, Fifth, Ninth, Tenth, and Eleventh Circuits, the U.S. Court of International Trade, and federal district courts in Pennsylvania, Texas, and the District of Columbia. Her languages include Spanish.

• Recognition & Leadership

Ms. Bussey-Garza has been named a Rising Star in Class Actions and Mass Torts by Super Lawyers each year from 2024 through 2026 and was recognized among Scene in SA’s Rising Star Lawyers in 2026. She is President of the Villanova Law chapter of the Order of the Coif, a founding member and Immediate Past President of the Villanova Law Women’s Network, and co-chair of that network’s Communications Committee.

• Professional Involvement

Ms. Bussey-Garza speaks regularly on litigation skills, including recurring guest sessions at the Charles Widger School of Law on preparing clients for depositions and on defending class actions, programs on the mass arbitration phenomenon, and panels on strategic litigation against the government and effective brief writing. She serves as DLA Piper’s liaison to the Retail Litigation Center and maintains an active pro bono practice with an emphasis on civil rights actions. Before joining DLA Piper, she interned for the Honorable Michael M. Baylson of the United States District Court.

• Experience

Ms. Bussey-Garza is defending a major national retailer and a leading national consumer goods company in putative class actions alleging deceptive pricing and labeling practices, and she represents dozens of retailers and consumer goods companies in affirmative litigation seeking refunds of tariffs collected under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. Her results include dismissals with prejudice of nationwide putative class actions for a Fortune 100 retailer, nine national retailers, a cloud service provider, and a luxury retailer, summary judgment for a global power equipment manufacturer in a wrongful death action alleging a product defect, and successful management of multiple appeals for a major pharmaceutical company in a multidistrict litigation involving a critical lifesaving drug. She has represented a former state jurist in a First Amendment challenge seeking Supreme Court review, developed appellate strategy for a Fortune 500 life sciences company that resulted in withdrawal of the action, and secured dismissal of federal statutory claims alleging censorship of online speech against a network analysis and managed services company.

Sneh Patel, Senior Attorney | DLA Piper

Sneh Patel is a Senior Attorney at DLA Piper in Miami whose trial work includes a complete defense verdict of no negligence after a four-day jury trial in Palm Beach County, Florida, where the plaintiff asked the jury to award more than 6.5 million dollars in damages. She focuses her practice on litigation, with an emphasis on product liability, mass torts, and class actions, and she has presented continuing education programs to insurance adjusters on topics including evidentiary standards, bad faith litigation, and coverage disputes.

• Education & Credentials

Ms. Patel earned her J.D. from the University of Illinois Chicago School of Law in 2017 and her B.A. from the University of Florida in 2014. She is admitted to practice in Florida and Illinois and before the United States District Courts for the Middle and Southern Districts of Florida.

• Recognition & Leadership

In law school, Ms. Patel was a member of the Trial Advocacy & Dispute Resolution Honors Council at UIC John Marshall Law School, competed in the National Trial Advocacy Competition held in Lansing, Michigan, and coached first-year law students for the school’s annual 1L Mock Trial Competition.

• Professional Involvement

Ms. Patel co-authored the article “Does a party to litigation have a common law duty to preserve evidence in Florida?” published in August 2023, and she has given continuing education presentations to insurance adjusters employed by small and large insurance companies on topics including evidentiary standards, bad faith litigation, and coverage disputes.

• Experience

Ms. Patel’s litigation practice at DLA Piper centers on product liability, mass tort, and class action matters. Before joining DLA Piper, she practiced at Kennedys in Miami, most recently as Special Counsel, defending insureds against third-party personal injury claims and insurance carriers against first-party property claims, and handling premises liability, bad faith, and directors and officers defense matters, with insurance defense experience in both Florida and Illinois. Her results there include the Palm Beach County defense verdict in a contested liability trucking accident case, and she was part of the team that secured an appellate victory in Florida’s Third District Court of Appeal compelling arbitration of a personal injury claim against Miami Dolphins, Ltd. and South Florida Stadium LLC.

SESSION 1 – The Law of Experts and Taking Effective Expert Depositions to Set Up Effective CrossExaminations | 12:00pm – 12:30pm

This session provides a deep dive into the law of expert witnesses, including the recent amendments to Rule 702, which informs taking an effective expert deposition. This session will discuss areas of focus for effective expert depositions, and tips and techniques for setting up an expert deposition for eventual cross-examination.

SESSION 2 – Strategic Considerations for Motions to Exclude Expert Testimony | 12:30pm – 1:00pm

Expert testimony can shape the outcome of a case, making strategic decisions regarding admissibility critically important. This session will address key considerations in evaluating whether to seek exclusion or limitation of an expert’s testimony and will provide practical tips, advocacy strategies, and best practices for preparing and arguing successful motions.

BREAK | 1:00 pm – 1:10 pm

SESSION 3 – Effective Cross-Examinations of Experts | 1:10pm – 2:10pm

This session will explore effective strategies and practical techniques for conducting impactful expert witness cross-examinations, including preparation, impeachment methods, and approaches for challenging an expert’s opinions, methodology, and conclusions, while maintaining credibility with the court and jury.