Raymond G. Mullady Jr

Ray Mullady leads the Washington, D.C. Litigation Group.  He is an accomplished trial lawyer with more than 20 jury trials and 25 years of complex litigation experience in a variety of areas, including product liability, business and commercial disputes, class litigation, insurance recovery, patent infringement, bankruptcy estimations, qui tam actions under the False Claims Act, civil penalty litigation under the Consumer Product Safety Act, employment disputes and defamation cases.  He has tried cases to verdict in numerous state and federal courts around the country and before arbitration panels, and has briefed and argued cases before numerous federal and state appellate courts.   

The following is a sample of his more notable engagements:

• Wyeth.  Mr. Mullady has represented Wyeth in numerous product liability actions in the Washington-Baltimore region and in federal and state courts throughout the United States.  He is currently part of a team of Orrick lawyers representing Wyeth nationally in litigation relating to vaccines containing the preservative Thimerosal.  Over the course of his career he has represented Wyeth in cases involving diet medications, DTP and oral polio vaccines, tetracycline, anti-depressants and over-the-counter products.
• Roche Molecular Systems.  Mr. Mullady was counsel for Roche Molecular Systems, Inc. and Hoffmann-LaRoche, Inc. in U.S. ex rel. Promega v. Hoffmann-LaRoche, Inc., et al., a qui tam case in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.  The case involved patents and licensing programs relating to Roche's Nobel Prize-winning polymerase chain reaction ("PCR") process for amplifying DNA for research, diagnostic and forensic uses.  The total amount of Promega's claims exceeded US$6 billion.  Mr. Mullady led a team of Orrick lawyers who obtained a dismissal of the case with prejudice in September 2004.
• W.R. Grace Bankruptcy.  Mr. Mullady was lead trial counsel for the court-appointed representative of future asbestos personal injury claimants in In re W.R. Grace & Co., Case No. 01-1137 (JKF), in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware, in which the estimated liability of the debtor exceeded US$3 billion. Following several weeks of trial in the Spring of 2008, W.R. Grace reached an agreement with the present and future asbestos claimants that would allow it to emerge from bankruptcy.
• American Cyanamid Company.  Mr. Mullady represented American Cyanamid in Worm v. American Cyanamid Co., 970 F.2d 1301, on remand, 1992 WL 386062, aff’d 5 F.3d 744 (4th Cir. 1993), a herbicide product liability case in which he obtained summary judgment on the basis of federal preemption.  He argued the case twice before the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, each time obtaining an affirmance of the trial court’s preemption ruling.  Mr. Mullady is part of a team of Orrick lawyers who represent American Cyanamid in a series of lead pigment-in-paint cases pending in state and federal courts around the country.  The cases include actions on behalf of states, municipalities, and governmental units, private classes and individuals, and involve both personal injury and property damage claims.
• Intellectual Property.  In 2002, Mr. Mullady tried to verdict a four-week patent infringement case involving an over-the-counter drug product in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.  In 2001-02, he was lead counsel on behalf of the inventor of a revolutionary protease inhibitor AIDS treatment drug in a US$1 billion fraud and breach of contract case, which was resolved.
• Daubert/Frye-Reed.  Mr. Mullady has substantial experience litigating Daubert and Frye-Reed challenges to “junk science” and unreliable plaintiff expert testimony.  Recently he was part of a team of Orrick lawyers who extended the boundaries of Frye-Reed in Maryland to preclude expert testimony hypothesizing that the presence of the preservative "thimerosal" in childhood vaccines causes neurological defects, such as autism.  Blackwell v. Wyeth, Inc., Court of Appeals of Maryland, No. 112, September Term 2008 (May 7, 2009).  In 1996, he secured the disqualification of the lead, national plaintiff expert in tire/rim “mismatch” personal injury litigation, in the District of Nebraska.  He argued the appeal of that decision before the Eighth Circuit, and obtained an affirmance of the lower court’s Daubert ruling in Pietzmeier v. Hennessy Industries, Inc., 97 F.3d 293 (8th Cir. 1996), cert denied 117 S.Ct. 1552 (1997).  This case was a precursor to the Supreme Court's landmark decision in Kuhmo Tire, Ltd. v. Carmichael, 526 U.S. 137 (1999), holding that Daubert applies not only to testimony based on scientific knowledge, but also to testimony based on technical or other specialized knowledge.
• First Amendment.  Mr. Mullady has represented media outlets as libel and First Amendment counsel.  In 2000, he tried to verdict a two-week libel case involving a public figure plaintiff in the Circuit Court for Anne Arundel County, Maryland.

Mr. Mullady served as partner-in-charge of the D.C. office's pro bono program for two years and currently serves on the firm's Risk Management Committee.

Mr. Mullady writes and lectures frequently on liability prevention, defense strategy and other litigation topics.

Admitted in

• District of Columbia
• Maryland

Court Admissions

Supreme Court of the United States

United States Court of Appeals

• Eighth Circuit
• Eleventh Circuit
• Fourth Circuit
• Sixth Circuit

United States Court of Federal Claims

United States District Court

• District of Arizona
• District of Columbia
• Maryland

Memberships

• Defense Research Institute: Drug and Medical Device Committee; Commercial Law Committee
• International Association of Defense Counsel: Drug, Device and Biotech Committee
• Maryland Association of Defense Trial Counsel
• Maryland Bar Foundation
• The Maryland State Bar Association
• District of Columbia Bar Association

Multimedia

Publications

• "Qui Tams: Being Prepared for Whistleblowers," Co-Author with Christopher O'Connell, ACI's 3rd National Conference for the Drug & Device Industries, June 24-25, 2008, Philadelphia, PA
• "Protecting Trade Secrets and Other Intellectual Property in Drug and Medical Device Litigation," Rx for the Defense DRI (Winter 2004), Co-Author with S. Hansen and J. Pelletier.
• “Everything You Needed and Wanted to Know About Black Box Warnings,” Drug & Medical Device Litigation, Defense Counsel Journal, Vol. 68, No. 1 January, 2001.
• “Everything You Wanted to Know About Black Box Warnings,” Drug & Medical Device Litigation, Defense Practice Course Book, The DRI Course Book Series, April, 2000.
• “The Federal Preemptive Effect of FDA Pre-Market Approval on Product Liability Claims For Regulated Prescription Drugs and Medical Devices,” Food, Drug, Cosmetic and Medical Device Law Device Law Disgest, Vol. aa, No. e, October, 1994, Co-Author with J. Quigley.
• “Sources of Toxics Liability to Private Parties, The Defense and Management of Toxics Litigation,” Government Institutes, Inc., 1990, Co-Author with R. Blue.
• “Considerations in the Management and Defense of Pharmaceutical Litigation in the United States,” Fulbright Papers 9, Products Liability, Insurance and the Pharmaceutical Industry 1990, G. Howells (Ed.).
• "Products Liability Law Manual," Maryland Institute for Continuing Professional Education of Lawyers, Inc., 1990, Co-Author with J. Dewey and F. Burch.
• “Probation Revocation in Maryland: The Effect of Nonfinal and Reversed Criminal Convictions,” 42 Maryland Law Review 196, 1983.