Heather F. Counts

For more than twenty years, Heather has acted as national counsel for manufacturers facing litigation in federal and state courts. Most recently she was part of trial teams winning back to back defense verdicts in California state courts for Japanese products manufacturers.

Heather is experienced in all phases of litigation, from responsive pleadings through post-trial and appellate briefing, She frequently excludes the opinions of expert witnesses through successful Rule 702 motions and disposes of cases pre-trial through summary judgment practice. Heather's expert witness work extends to fields including product design (mechanical engineering, warnings and human factors), epidemiology, neuropsychology, emergency medicine, and life care planning.

Heather is well-versed in other commercial claims, such as civil RICO. She served on the defense trial team for one of the largest civil RICO cases brought by the Department of Justice (U.S. v. Philip Morris USA), where she handled issues including marketing, consumer risk perception, injury causation and compelled commercial speech. Heather has also helped craft RICO claims brought by civil plaintiffs in complex commercial litigation in the telecommunications industry.

A longtime member of the Tobacco Group at her previous firm, she was part of a trial team in West Virginia -- one of the nation's top-ranked "Judicial Hellholes"​ -- that successfully defended a tobacco client against products and fraud claims in a mass consolidated plaintiffs'​ action.

She has also successfully briefed appeals in products liability cases before the Third, Fourth, and Tenth Circuits, and drafted an amicus brief regarding constitutional law, which was cited in the Supreme Court’s landmark opinion, McDonald v. City of Chicago, 561 U.S. 742 (2010).