Beth L. Kaufman, Partner
Beth Kaufman handles complex litigation involving product liability and toxic tort, employment, commercial matters and family law matters.
In employment matters, Ms. Kaufman has defended sensitive race, age and gender discrimination and sexual harassment cases in both the state and federal courts and in administrative agencies, for companies in the pharmaceutical and financial services industries. Through a thorough understanding of those industries, her client’s business and creative lawyering, Ms. Kaufman has obtained defense verdicts at trial and after hearings, summary judgment, dismissals at the pleading stage, and prevailed upon opposing counsel and their clients to simply dismiss cases that lack merit.
In the commercial litigation area, Ms. Kaufman has handled litigation arising from mergers and divestitures and complex financial and real estate transactions. She has successfully litigated securities, antitrust and trade regulation matters.
In the product liability and toxic tort area, Ms. Kaufman has served as national coordinating counsel, national science counsel, New York counsel in mass torts and other pattern litigation and as a member of nationwide “virtual law firms.” In these various roles, Ms. Kaufman has developed innovative strategies and achieved excellent results for her clients, ranging from defense verdicts at trial to summary judgment, to convincing plaintiffs to abandon their cases due to a lack of merit. She has identified and developed top experts in various scientific fields and medical disciplines and turned them into effective testifying experts. As a corollary to her work in this field, she has worked closely with regulatory affairs, mergers, divestitures and acquisitions, and marketing personnel, and helped to develop and coordinate media strategy.
Ms. Kaufman currently holds a three-year appointment (2009-2012) as the second Circuit Representative on the ABA Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary and is co-chair of the SAC Oversight Committee of the ABA Section of Litigation. She just completed a four-year term on the Section of Litigation Council and co-chaired the Section’s programming and events at the 2008 ABA Annual Meeting and the Section’s 2005 Section Annual Conference. She has been active in the Section of Litigation since 1989, when she became vice-chair of the Products Liability Committee, and chaired that committee from 1999-2002. She went on to serve as co-chair of CLE for the Section of Litigation from 2002-2004 and was a Division Director of the Section of Litigation, overseeing CLE, from 2004-2006.
Ms. Kaufman is a member of the Board of Directors of the National Association of Women Lawyers and serves as its Treasurer and as board liaison to NAWL’s Amicus Committee.
From the start of her legal career, Ms. Kaufman has been active in The Association of the Bar of the City of New York, one of the nation’s most important bar associations. She was a member of the Committee on Product Liability before serving as secretary of the Committee on Lawyers in Transition and then serving as chair of a new committee, the Committee on Law Student Perspectives. Ms. Kaufman chaired the Committee on State Courts of Superior Jurisdiction for The Association, and in that role participated in judicial candidate reviews, and proposed innovations in litigation practice for New York's trial level courts. She served on The Association’s Executive Committee from 2000-2004 and assumed the helm of the Committee on the Judiciary in 2004 (the first woman to do so), where she supervised the effort of over 60 lawyers in their evaluation of all judicial candidates for primary election, general election, appointment or certification to all state and federal courts within the City of New York, to the New York Court of Appeals and to the U.S. Supreme Court, as well as candidates running for election as District Attorney in each of the five boroughs and those who were nominated as United States Attorney in the Eastern and Southern Districts of New York. She also served on that Association’s blue ribbon Task Force on Judicial Selection.
Ms. Kaufman was appointed by New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg to serve on the Mayor’s Advisory Committee on the Judiciary and currently serves on that Committee.
Since the late 1980s, Ms. Kaufman has been a speaker on numerous programs of the ABA and The Association of the Bar of the City of New York on both product liability and practice development issues.
Ms. Kaufman is a member of the Board of Directors of the National Association of Women Lawyers and serves on NAWL's Committee to Evaluate Supreme Court Nominees (which evaluated the candidacies of both Justices Roberts and Alito). Ms. Kaufman was honored as NAWL's Outstanding Member at its 2006 Annual Meeting.
Ms. Kaufman is an elected member of the Federation of Defense and Corporate Counsel, a member of the International Association of Defense Counsel, the Defense Research Institute, and a member of the Board of Legal Advisors of Legal Momentum (formerly the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund). She served on the Programming and Planning Committee for the Second Circuit Judicial Conference from 2002-2004.
Ms. Kaufman received her J.D. degree from the University of Richmond School of Law in 1978 (Williams Law Scholar) and graduated from Queens College of the City University of New York (magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa) with a B.A. in 1975. She is admitted to practice in New York and Pennsylvania, the United States Supreme Court, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and the United States District Courts for the Southern, Eastern, Western and Northern Districts of New York and for the District of Connecticut.
Publications:
Author, "Sophisticated User Defense Gains Acceptance," Product Liability Law & Strategy, May 2009
Author, "Lone Pine Orders Increase Judicial Efficiency," Product Liability Law & Strategy, July 2008
Author, "Waiver of Attorney-Client Privilege and Work-Product Protection,” Product Liability Law & Strategy, December 2007
Author, "FDA’s New Labeling Rule Asserts Federal Pre-emption of State Product Liability Claims,” Product Liability Law & Strategy, April 2006
Author, “New Federal Rules for Electronic Discovery May Become Effective in 2006”, Product Liability Law and Strategy, October 2005
Author, “Federal Pre-emption of Failure to Warn Claims in Recent Drug Cases,” Product Liability Law & Strategy, July 2005
