Kevin E. Young

Overview

Kevin Young focuses his practice on complex product liability litigation, including the defense of cases involving a variety of toxic materials, industrial machinery, pharmaceuticals, and automotive defects. He has over 30 years of experience in defending numerous major manufacturers of asbestos-containing products in local, regional, and national courts. Additionally, Kevin has substantial experience in pharmaceutical litigation as well as the automobile product liability defense area. He has extensive first chair trial experience in mass tort cases and has appellate experience before the Massachusetts Court of Appeals and the First Circuit Court of Appeals.

Representative Matters

• Represents clients, including a manufacturer of pre-engineered metal buildings as well as one of the world’s largest engineering-construction firms, in connection with asbestos-related litigation matters such as personal injury claims, property damage claims, and Massachusetts Chapter 93A claims.
• Serves as national coordinating counsel in asbestos litigation matters for a manufacturer of hydronic systems and equipment. Through this representation, Kevin has defended mining companies; manufacturers of pumps, valves, heat exchangers, spray insulation, pipe and boiler products, and brake linings; distributors; and contractors. As a result of this experience, he has substantial knowledge concerning insulation products and asbestos-containing products that were marketed in the United States and Canada, extending from the various types of insulation products used; their purposes; their chemical, mineralogical, and physical properties; manufacturing and application process; alleged medical risks; and various forms of asbestos used in the products (chrysotile, amosite, crocidolite).
• Previously served as national coordinating counsel for two pharmaceutical clients in more than 20,000 individual and multi-party cases in federal courts and in the courts of all 50 states, as well as Canada. Kevin coordinated and directed local counsel in all 50 states and developed and used state-of-the-art information and data systems to manage and coordinate the litigation. His team successfully litigated the issue of the admissibility of scientific evidence in courts in various parts of the country, including a widely publicized win in an evidentiary Daubert hearing in Massachusetts resulting in the preclusion of certain expert testimony and ultimate dismissal of his client in a death action. They also prevailed in a Daubert hearing which resulted in the preclusion of certain expert testimony on medical causation issues. As a result of that victory, plaintiffs’ counsel around the country with similar cases voluntarily dismissed his clients and other defendants in the thousands of cases pending against them.
• Represented two of the nation’s largest automobile manufacturers in product liability matters.