Litigation

Our multidisciplinary team has served as lead and national litigation counsel in state, federal and appellate courts across 49 states, the District of Columbia and U.S. island territories.

Who We Represent

We advise some of the nation’s largest public corporations, as well as private, middle-market and startup companies spanning a range of industries.  Our team has particularly deep experience in the retail and consumer products, manufacturing, financial services, logistics and transportation, construction, insurance, healthcare, and oil and gas sectors, among others.

Our clients include:

• Nearly one-third of the National Retail Federation’s Top 100 list, including over half of the top 25 retailers
• More than 600 middle-market and global consumer brands
• 150 financial institutions
• Major automotive manufacturers and suppliers
• Major technology and software companies

Our Approach

We pride ourselves on building decades-long relationships with our clients by providing pragmatic, strategic counsel and responsive, customized service at the highest levels.  Our litigators work across offices and practices to help clients assess the potential risk and exposure facing their industries and companies.  When disputes arise, we guide clients in making informed decisions about whether to litigate or settle cases.

In each case, we assess the potential for a cost-effective settlement, with an eye toward advancing our clients’ goals in the litigation.  We also evaluate opportunities to craft “win-win” solutions to contain reputational damage and control costs by employing a range of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) methods.  When clients decide to fight or defend claims in court, we mobilize our coast-to-coast team of trial and appellate lawyers to represent clients in all types of litigation and appellate proceedings.

Trial and Appellate Counsel

Vorys boasts a diverse bench of attorneys with decades of experience trying cases in court.  Our ranks include fellows of the prestigious American College of Trial Lawyers, a former Supreme Court of Ohio justice, and former appellate, federal and state court law clerks.  Several of our lawyers also have gone on to serve with distinction as judges on federal and state appellate courts. 

Our appellate lawyers represent clients in matters beginning at trial and also regularly parachute in to obtain favorable results on appeal.  We have represented clients in federal courts of appeals across the country, including the U.S. Supreme Court, and often file amicus curiae briefs for clients with important stakes in the outcome of appeals with which they are not involved. 

With long-standing roots in Ohio, our appellate lawyers have been appointed by the Supreme Court of Ohio to serve on the Board of Bar Examiners, the Board of Commissioners on Character & Fitness and the Board of Commissioners on Grievances & Discipline.

Our class action lawyers advise on the appropriate forum to remove state court class actions to federal court by employing the Class Action Fairness Act (CAFA) and other mechanisms.  With extensive experience serving as national counsel in multidistrict litigation (MDL), we are adept at coordinating cases to avoid duplication and reduce defense costs. 

Vorys’ litigation group represents clients in the full spectrum of civil and criminal litigation and has particularly extensive experience handling cases involving:

• Antitrust
• Appellate matters
• Breach of contract
• Commercial litigation
• Employment matters
• False Claims Act
• Financial services litigation
• Government investigations, including qui tam and white collar cases
• Intellectual property
• National and state class actions
• Products liability and toxic tort
• Privacy and data security
• Real estate/property
• Securities litigation
• Tax

Our recent experience includes:

• Serving as national counsel to Fortune 500 companies, particularly in products liability matters involving consumer products, chemicals, medical devices and pharmaceuticals
• Acting as national coordinating counsel in a range of toxic tort and chemical exposure litigation
• Representing clients in some of the most significant antitrust cases in recent years, including 18 major U.S. retailers in a lawsuit filed in the Southern District of New York alleging violations of U.S. antitrust laws by Visa and Mastercard
• Regularly representing clients in civil litigation and investigations brought by the Department of Justice, the Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general, as well as in criminal grand juries and trials
• Leveraging our long-standing history of trying False Claims Act cases in both the health care and government contracts arenas to become one of few firms to win defense jury verdicts for government contractors
• Representing international brands accused of noncompliance with various privacy regulations

Litigation Technology

Vorys’ litigation group works closely with our in-house technology and eDiscovery professionals to proactively assess challenges posed by e-discovery rules and to prepare for such discovery.  Among their many functions, our eDiscovery team:

• Advises on cost-effective strategies for collecting and analyzing relevant data to meet litigation discovery demands
• Assists in reviewing records creation, retention and destruction policies and advises on best practices 
• Counsels on developing litigation holds to withstand scrutiny by opposing counsel and courts
• Assesses the need to secure and preserve potentially relevant documents and data
• Develops strategies to protect against evidence spoliation claims frequently employed by plaintiffs’ class counsel
• Reviews and analyzes records, with proficiency in technology-assisted review (TAR), predictive coding, email threading, batch coding and redacting to streamline discovery and reduce costs

To learn more about our practice and litigation technology team, click here. 

National Recognition

We are proud to have earned top honors as a national Tier 1 firm for “Commercial Litigation” in the Best Lawyers^® “Best Law Firms” report annually since 2016, as well as national and regional recognition across numerous litigation practice areas.  In addition, in the BTI Litigation Outlook 2025, clients named Vorys “Distinguished in Litigation.”

We also have earned long-standing recognition as a “Leading Law Firm” in Ohio for “Litigation: General Commercial” in the prestigious Chambers USA guide. In its 2024 edition, Chambers and Partners lauds Vorys’ experience “in representing large clients in a range of matters including class actions, toxic torts, antitrust and False Claims Act litigation.” Clients described the litigation group as “extremely proactive and deft at anticipating questions that clients will have.”