PAST PRESIDENTS

Jack M. Williams Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice, PLLC Atlanta, Georgia 404.879.2428

Jack M. Williams, a Member of the law firm of Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice, PLLC, has been named 2009-2010 President of the Litigation Counsel of America.  Jack is a member of the Product Liability Practice Group in Womble Carlyle’s Atlanta office and has over 20 years experience as a trial lawyer and litigator. Jack has significant litigation defense experience and focuses his practice on product liability, personal injury and mass tort litigation, internal corporate investigations, e-discovery issues, white collar crime and trial practice.

Before joining Womble Carlyle in 2008, Jack was a partner at Powell Goldstein LLP in Atlanta from 2006 to 2008, where he worked as a member of the Tort Litigation & Environmental Practice Group and Special Matters and Investigations Group.  He was also a partner at King & Spalding LLP in Atlanta from 2000 to 2006, where he worked in the Product Liability Practice Group.  After beginning his career as an Associate at King & Spalding from 1989 to 1995, he served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia from 1995 to 2000.  Jack is a Charter Fellow of the LCA and a Charter Member of the LCA Diversity Law Institute.  He attended the 2007 LCA Spring Conference and Induction of Fellows in New York, the 2008 LCA Spring Conference and Induction of Fellows in Miami, Florida, and the 2009 LCA Fall Conference and Induction of Fellows in Charleston, South Carolina.  Jack also served as moderator for the 2009 LCA Diversity Summit in Atlanta.

Jack was appointed Chair of the Magistrate Judge Merit Selection Panel by the judges of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia in June 2008.  In 2003 Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue appointed him to a seat on the five-member State Ethics Commission, which enforces Georgia’s campaign finance disclosure and reporting requirements under the Ethics in Government Act, and served on the Commission until January 2007.  He is the Commission’s Immediate Past Chair.  Jack has served as Adjunct Professor at Emory Law School and has been a seminar speaker and authored works on class actions, trial practice, and various issues relating to e-discovery, white-collar crime, internal corporate investigations, and diversity in the workplace.  He has been selected as a Georgia Super Lawyer each year from 2006 to 2010 and was recognized by Leadership Georgia in 2004.

He has served as trial counsel for one of the defendants in the multi-billion dollar Louisiana medical monitoring class action, Scott, et al. v. The American Tobacco Company, Inc., et al. The trial lasted nearly three years from 2001 to 2004, and an appeal of the only claim won by plaintiffs is ongoing. Plaintiffs sought a $10 billion medical monitoring fund to cover a wide variety of diagnostic tests for cancer, heart disease, and respiratory ailments. In a sweeping victory on the medical monitoring claim, the jury found in defendants’ favor on every medical test sought by plaintiffs. Defendants also won a defense verdict on each of plaintiffs’ claims for product defect.

In other cases, Jack represented an Atlanta bank that was defrauded of several million dollars via a complex factoring scheme, a former insulation contractor embroiled in asbestos litigation, and he served as trial counsel to Americasmart Real Estate, L.L.C. in a Superior Court of Fulton County trial in which the jury returned a verdict on Americasmart’s behalf. He also defended a multi-national pharmaceutical company in personal injury litigation involving one of the world’s best-selling prescription medications.

While serving as an Assistant United States Attorney, Jack was the government’s lead trial counsel or co-counsel in a number of cases in which convictions were obtained on behalf of the United States, including a case in which a securities dealer defrauded 45 investors out of over $3.5 million in a 4-year Ponzi scheme; a case in which a mortgage company owner defrauded a local bank out of over $1.2 million in an extensive check-kiting scheme, and a case in which, after a month-long jury trial, a criminal defense lawyer was convicted on corruption charges. He successfully defended before the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit several convictions he obtained on behalf of the United States. He also has extensive experience in grand jury practice and was awarded a Certificate of Appreciation from the United States Secret Service for his successful investigation and prosecution of a large bank fraud and money laundering conspiracy operating throughout the southeast United States.

In other product liability suits, Jack served as trial counsel in Taylor v. General Motors Corporation, in which General Motors obtained a defense verdict after an eight-day jury trial in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia. He also successfully defended before the Georgia Supreme Court the case Love v. Whirlpool, et al. 264 Ga. 701, 449 S.E.2d 602 (1994), in which the Court upheld the constitutionality of Georgia’s Statute of Repose.

Jack earned his B.S. degree in Business Administration at Bowling Green State University in 1980, his M.B.A. with a focus in Accounting and Tax from Cleveland State University in 1985, and his J.D. from the University of Michigan in 1989.  Before entering law school, Jack played professional football for seven years with the then St. Louis Cardinals of the NFL and the Ottawa Rough Riders and Edmonton Eskimos of the CFL.