George C Lombardi

Practice Areas

Co-chair of the firm’s Litigation Department and a Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers, George’s skills have been widely recognized by a number of the leading legal directories. The American Lawyer (2014), named him a “Litigator of the Year,” and he is described by IAM Patent 1000 as a “truly gifted lawyer and one of the finest trial lawyers anywhere in the world.”

George routinely serves as lead trial counsel for companies in highly publicized patent cases. For example, his US$1B jury verdict on behalf of Monsanto in Monsanto Co. v. E.I. duPont de Nemours & Co. was recognized as the number three verdict in The National Law Journal’s Top 100 Verdicts of 2012 and was featured as the cover story in the Spring 2013 Am Law Litigation supplement. This verdict also earned him a “Litigator of the Week” mention by the Am Law Litigation Daily and recognition as an “Intellectual Property MVP” for 2012 by Law360. The case involved Monsanto’s ground-breaking Roundup Ready® technology, which farmers worldwide use to make their crops herbicide resistant.

He has handled and continues to handle various other patent cases involving telephone and computer technology, medical devices and instruments, and pharmaceuticals. Notably, he has obtained trial wins in matters involving a number of top-selling drugs, including: Zubsolv®, Prozac®, Yasmin®, Baraclude®, Razadyne ER/Razadyne IR®, Temodar®, Amrix®, Amprya®, Sensipar®, and Testim®, among others. Many of his cases have involved first of their kind wins. For instance, the Baraclude® case was the first ANDA case finding obviousness of a chemical compound patent, and the Prozac® case was called the “Mother of All Patent Challenges” by Fortune magazine. He recently obtained a trial victory in a case involving the brand drug Zubsolv®.

Outside of the patent arena, George has secured numerous victories for client Philip Morris (PM) in its ongoing tobacco litigation cases. Most recently he served as first-chair trial counsel and obtained a complete defense jury verdict in the retrial of Craft v. Philip Morris, a billion-dollar consumer fraud class action. In connection with his product liability work, The Legal 500 US described him as “a bet-the-company trial lawyer who is extremely easy to work with and strikes up a great rapport with juries.” Previously, he served as lead trial counsel in Falise v. Philip Morris, an eight-week trial that helped stem a wave of suits by asbestos manufacturers against the tobacco industry, and as co-lead trial counsel in Iron Workers Local Union No. 17 Insurance Fund v. Philip Morris, which involved a US$2B RICO claim brought by union trust funds against the tobacco industry and resulted in a jury verdict for the defense. In addition, he was second chair in State of Washington v. Philip Morris, the Washington state attorney general action that was being tried to a jury at the time the National State Attorney General Tobacco Settlement was reached in November of 1998.

George’s securities and commodities litigation experience includes the successful defense in a jury trial of a US$30M RICO claim arising out of a commodities transaction (Farmland Industries v. Frazier-Parrott Commodities) and the defense of a four-month securities fraud and RICO jury trial in which the client was dismissed before verdict (In re American Continental Corporation/Lincoln Savings & Loan Securities Litigation).

Other significant trials include the successful defense of a sports agent accused of defrauding various universities (United States v. Bloom); the successful defense of criminal fraud claims (United States v. Commito); and the successful defense in a bench trial of a breach of contract case (Indianapolis Life v. Dominick’s Finer Foods).