The Dallas office of Dykema has snagged four top litigators who specialize in products liability and automotive litigation and one or two more lawyers may join them soon.
Jeffrey J. Cox, Deron L. Wade, Prescott W. Smith and Clay A. Cossé – all former lawyers at Hartline Dacus Barger Dreyer in Dallas – joined Dykema on Monday. Cox and Wade join Dykema as members or partners, while Smith and Cossé are senior counsel.
The four attorneys bring with them a solid book of business, as they are among a team of lawyers representing General Motors in its national, multidistrict litigation involving ignition switch defects, which led to a recall in 2014 of about 800,000 vehicles.
GM is a major client of Dykema, which has 112 lawyers in Texas, including 46 in Dallas.
“Dykema has deep roots in the automotive industry and adding a team with this kind of experience and expertise in automotive liability litigation makes absolute sense for us,” says Christopher Kratovil, an appellate law expert who leads Dykema’s Dallas operation.
“Jeff, Deron, Prescott and Clay each have invaluable experience handling high-profile cases with a national scope,” Kratovil says. “Combined with Dykema’s existing national strength in litigation, the Dallas office is now well positioned to handle even the largest product liability and high-exposure tort cases.”
Cox, who received his law degree from Southern Methodist University’s Dedman School of Law, focuses his practice on products liability and large commercial matters. Over the last two decades, he has served as regional counsel for several of the world’s largest automakers.
Wade, a graduate of the University of Houston Law Center, has defended major automobile manufacturers in mass tort, wrongful death and catastrophic injury lawsuits. He also represents electric power and natural gas companies as trial counsel in high-risk, high-exposure matters and serves as lead Texas counsel for an international energy construction company.
Smith, who has his law degree from the University of Texas, has been involved at the pre-trial and trial phases of two mass tort MDL proceedings, one involving the oil and gas industry, and the second involving an extensive safety recall in the automotive industry.
Cossé, a graduate of the Louisiana State University Law Center, has represented auto manufacturers in complex automotive personal injury litigation and regulatory matters involving crashworthiness of various systems, including airbags, seatbacks, safety belts and rollovers. He served on a major auto manufacturer’s national counsel team for its seatback litigation.