Elizabeth Runyan Geise

Partner
Elizabeth Runyan Geise is well-versed in the management and defense of product liability and toxic tort cases across the country.
Elizabeth Runyan Geise

Elizabeth Runyan Geise is well-versed in the management and defense of product liability and toxic tort cases across the country. She assists corporations with strategic planning concerning large-scale toxic tort issues, especially those involving diseases with long latency periods.

To best serve her clients, Betsy utilizes her years of experience and her analytical skills to determine the best approach to each case. She investigates claims thoroughly while developing creative solutions for reasonably resolving matters early on. Betsy is mindful of costs and risks, and she works hard to manage cases in the most cost-effective and sensible way. Her approach is dogged and analytical, yet also sensitive to costs and to the unique facts of each case.”

Client Work

  • Serving for 10 years as national coordinating counsel for a major building materials manufacturer that is a defendant in thousands of asbestos personal injury lawsuits. In this role, Betsy supervises local counsel throughout the United States and is responsible for the overall defense of the litigation, including managing discovery, preparing and trying cases to verdict, advising on settlement and maintaining a consistent litigation strategy on a nationwide basis.
  • Achieving summary judgment for the defendant in a medical monitoring class action for uranium exposure.
  • Achieving summary judgment for an insurer in a fraud claim involving thousands of potential claims.
  • Representing mining companies and others in a variety of environmental claims.
  • Advising medical device manufacturers and conducting internal investigations on their behalf.
  • Advising foreign companies looking to enter the U.S. market concerning product liability risk management, including such issues as product design, warnings, indemnity arrangements and insurance coverage. For example, Betsy assisted a biomaterials producer in Europe and represented an Australian manufacturer of building products.

Publications, Presentations & Recognitions

Publications

  • “A Much Higher Burden for Take-Home Asbestos Plaintiffs,” (co-author) Legal 360 (Jul. 2013)

Presentations

  • “Is Cumulative No Longer Substantial? Appellate Courts’ Recent Answers (and Some Practical Ideas)” DRI 2018 Asbestos Medicine Seminar 2018, Austin, Texas (Nov. 8, 2018)
  • Discussion of “Position Statement on Asbestos from the Joint Policy Committee of the Societies of Epidemiology” and IARC Monograph “Arsenic, Metals, Fibres and Dusts,” (moderator) DRI Asbestos Medicine Seminar (Nov. 2013)
  • “Bankruptcy Trust Claims – Defendant’s Perspective,” Perrin Conference (Mar. 2012)
  • Industries
  • Bar & Court Admissions
    • District of Columbia Bar
    • Maryland Bar
    • US Supreme Court
    • US Court of Appeals, 6th Circuit
    • US Court of Appeals, 7th Circuit
    • US Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit
  • Education
    Harvard Law School, JD, magna cum laude, 1980
    University of Michigan, AB, high distinction and high honors, 1977

Perspectives