Russell Jackson

Russell Jackson defends companies’ products and advertising in trial and appellate courts. He earned his stripes in New York and has argued from NYC to Los Angeles, and Anchorage to Beaumont representing clients in the beverage, consumer product, insurance, computer, household appliance, pharmaceutical, medical device, and publishing industries. He handles class actions, mass torts, MDLs, product liability cases, and complex commercial litigation. He represents a major American insurer in putative class actions in Missouri, Illinois, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Tennessee. Russell has often worked in multi-firm teams representing clients facing nationwide state and federal claims.

Russell frequently helps clients craft communication plans to explain legal developments to their stakeholders, and he counsels C-suite executives about legislation, rulemaking, and corporate social responsibility programs. Additionally, he helps clients implement effective self-regulation of advertising and defends their ads before independent review boards.

Russell was a products liability columnist for the National Law Journal for nearly two decades. He has taught aggregate litigation as an adjunct professor at Washington University School of Law here in St. Louis for the last decade. He is a member of the American Law Institute and a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation, and he writes a law blog on aggregate litigation on the LexBlog network: www.noclasslawyer.com.

Russell practiced at Skadden, Arps in New York for more than 20 years and was a partner in that firm’s mass torts group. He taught products liability as an adjunct professor at Fordham University School of Law and Brooklyn Law School. Russell also has lectured at Columbia and NYU law schools; at conferences sponsored by the American Bar Association, the American Law Institute, the Defense Research Institute, and the American Conference Institute; and participated in online symposia for SCOTUSblog.com.

Representative Matters

• Russell was part of a Dowd Bennett team that recently won dismissal of a putative class action against an insurer in the Western District of Missouri.  Plaintiff alleged the insurer should have paid the sales taxes and registration fees on replacement vehicles for policyholders whose vehicles had been declared a total loss over the last ten years. The district court held that the policy was not ambiguous and covered only loss to the policyholders’ vehicles, not taxes or fees associated with other vehicles. Thus, it dismissed the case.
• Russell was part of a Dowd Bennett team that recently won dismissal of a putative nationwide class action alleging that an issuer of motorcycle insurance policies and its agents had a practice of forging insureds’ signatures on forms declining uninsured motorist coverage.  The suit initially had been filed in Arkansas state court.  Dowd Bennett removed the case to federal court and defeated a motion to remand.  The court subsequently granted Dowd Bennett’s motion to dismiss, holding that: a defendant cannot conspire with its employees/agents, consumers do not have standing to sue under the Lanham Act, and plaintiff failed to plead his fraud-based claims with the particularity required by Federal Rule of Civil Procedures 9(b).
• Russell was part of a Dowd Bennett team that persuaded a Tennessee federal court to dismiss a putative class action in which a plaintiff sued his insurer to recover as “loss of use” damages the fees for an “equivalent” rental car (that plaintiff never actually rented) after his sportscar was rear-ended by an uninsured motorist. Although the court allowed the plaintiff to replead his individual claim, it held that where the uninsured motorist is known, Tennessee’s Uninsured Motorist statute does not allow an insured to bring a direct action against the insurer; rather, it requires the insured to first establish the uninsured motorist’s liability in an action against that motorist, with the insurer as an unnamed defendant. The practical effect of this holding is that a class action would be unworkable because establishing the insurer’s liability for uninsured motorist coverage would be an individual issue for each putative class member, which should preclude certification.
• Russell was part of a local counsel team that, with a New York law firm, won dismissal of a defamation action in the Western District of Missouri against a prominent anti-hate organization. The plaintiff—a perennial candidate for political office—alleged the defendant had defamed him and invaded his privacy by re-publishing information from his publicly-available social media, including a photo of him next to a robed Klansman at a “cross lighting” ceremony. The court, in a thorough opinion, set forth the relevant elements of the torts and the constitutional defenses, holding that:  the opinions pled could not be the subject of a defamation claim, the pleading failed to meet the applicable “actual malice” standard, and republishing information one publishes on the Internet is not an “invasion of privacy” when it is not done for a commercial purpose.
• Russell was part of a Dowd Bennett team hired in the middle of trial by two defendants after a state court jury had returned a multi-million dollar verdict against them at the close of the compensatory damages phase of the case. It was one of the largest defamation verdicts in that state’s history. In the subsequent punitive damages phase of the trial, the Dowd Bennett team successfully moved to exclude one of the defendants, and the jury’s punitive damages verdict against the other was less than $1 million. In response to Dowd Bennett’s post-trial motions, the trial court granted remittitur of the compensatory award, reducing it by $20 million. While Dowd Bennett was handling the appeal, the parties reached a favorable resolution of the matter.
• Russell won dismissal of a class action challenging the labeling of “non-alcoholic” malt beverages. The U.S. District Court for the Central District of California held that federal approval of the label triggered the “safe harbor doctrine,” requiring dismissal of the UCL, CLRA, and FAL causes of action. And it held that the negligence, implied warranty, and intentional and negligent misrepresentation claims failed as a matter of law.
• Russell defended a federal class action challenging property insurers’ right to privately negotiate with each other outside of the judicial system to address payments they have made for which they ultimately would have equitable subrogation rights. After the motion to dismiss was fully briefed, Plaintiffs dropped the suit.
• Russell represented on a pro bono basis a former trustee of a religiously-affiliated university to oppose its attempt to cede control of its assets to the state denominational association. After successfully intervening in the school’s pro forma state court proceeding, Russell argued the governing documents the school asked the court to approve imperiled the university’s academic accreditation by compromising trustee independence and professors’ academic freedom. The university dropped its bid for court approval of the new governing documents just as the court was to decide what discovery would be allowed. The university subsequently was placed on probation by its accrediting authority.
• Russell advised a consumer product manufacturer on establishing a non-profit foundation to assist independent scientific researchers in measuring the impact of industry corporate social responsibility programs.
• Russell successfully defended Brooklyn Law School in a state court class action for tuition refunds, which alleged alumni were defrauded into attending law school by the school’s published placement statistics.
• Russell also successfully defended an alcohol beverage company in a series of nine class actions that sought billions of dollars from the industry at large, claiming that attractive advertising caused illegal underage drinking. These cases were dismissed on the pleadings without discovery, and those victories were upheld on appeal.
• Russell also won dismissal of a public nuisance action filed against an alcohol beverage company by an Indian nation alleging that product sales by retailers off the reservation caused various injuries on the reservation.
• Russell won summary judgment and denial of class certification in a federal case alleging that the “reasonable expectations doctrine” entitled juveniles to “non-smoker discounts” on life insurance policies.
• Russell persuaded the Texas Supreme Court to reverse certification of a nationwide class action against a computer manufacturer, holding that express warranty law varies meaningfully among the states and that the purchasers lacked sufficient class cohesion to form an equitable relief class.