Biography • Product Liability Defence

Victor Schwartz is a partner in the Washington office of the Kansas City-based law firm of Shook Hardy & Bacon LLP, and chairs its public policy group. The focus of the practice is to integrate litigation, government affairs and public relations. The public policy group seeks to be the vanguard of developing public policy issues that will help improve our civil justice system. Mr Schwartz has an active appellate practice, and advises product manufacturers on liability prevention, litigation, and public relations issues.

Mr Schwartz serves on the board of directors of the Searle Civil Justice Institute at George Mason University School of Law and is a frequent participant in judicial education programmes.

Before entering the full-time practice of law, Mr Schwartz was a professor and dean at the University of Cincinnati College of Law. He currently serves on the College's Board of Visitors. In 2012, the College established the Professor Victor E Schwartz Chair in Tort Law.

Mr Schwartz served as chair of the Federal Inter-Agency Task Force on Product Liability at the Department of Commerce, and the Federal Inter-Agency Council on Insurance. He was the principal author of the Uniform Product Liability Act and the Federal Risk Retention Act. For his work in government, he received the Secretary of Commerce's Award for Professional Excellence.

For more than three decades, Mr Schwartz has been co-author of the most widely used torts casebook in the United States, Prosser, Wade and Schwartz's Torts (12th ed. 2010). He also is author of the leading text, Comparative Negligence (5th ed. 2010).

Mr Schwartz is a life member of the American Law Institute (ALI). He is an adviser for each of the Restatement (Third) of Torts projects: products liability, apportionment of liability and liability for physical injury and emotional harm. He also serves as general counsel to the American Tort Reform Association.

As co-chair of the American Legislative Exchange Council's civil justice task force, a bi-partisan group of state legislators, Mr Schwartz helped create the Jury Patriotism Act, the Trespasser Responsibility Act, the Private Attorney Sunshine Act, the Appeal Bond Fairness Act and numerous other model state laws. Over 150 of these have been enacted by state legislatures during Mr Schwartz's tenure as the task force co-chair. His law review articles have addressed virtually every major public policy area of modern tort law.

Sought by print and broadcast media, Mr Schwartz is frequently quoted in The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and The New York Times. He has appeared on Oprah, 60 Minutes and network news programmes. In light of his accomplishments, The Legal Times of Washington named Mr Schwartz one of Washington's Top 30 'Visionary' lawyers from over the past 30 years. Over the past two decades, the National Law Journal has frequently named Mr Schwartz one of the 100 most influential lawyers in the United States. In 2012 Alumni of and former students of Mr. Schwartz at the University of Cincinnati College of Law established the Victor E, Schwartz Chair in Tort Law in his honour.

Mr Schwartz obtained his BA summa cum laude from Boston University and JD magna cum laude from Columbia Law School. He is a member of the bars of New York, Ohio and the District of Columbia.