Garrett J. Fitzpatrick

Equity Partner Retired  / New York

Gary is one of the Founding Partners of the Firm and has been practicing product liability and aviation law for over 45 years, representing major companies from all over the world. Gary is lead defense counsel for his clients in complex litigation arising from airline catastrophes, military crashes, and general aviation accidents.

His expertise in product liability played an instrumental role in the creation and judicial adoption of the Government Contractor Defense in military mishap litigation. One of his cases for a major defense contractor was the first to uphold this defense at the Federal Appellate Court level and its three-pronged approach to this important defense was subsequently adopted by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Gary has also been closely aligned over many years with the Aircraft Builders Council (“ABC”) Program, which is one of the longest running aviation product insurance programs in the world. In addition to handling the defense of claims and litigation of the numerous diversified companies insured under this Program, he has been instrumental in providing claims prevention services to these companies, including product liability seminars. For companies manufacturing commercial product lines, these seminars also cover important subjects including active product integrity programs; contractual reviews; document management; post-sale responsibilities and warnings and other preventative measures. These seminars are conducted at each company’s facilities across the United States as well as abroad.

Gary has also lectured on product liability and aviation law at legal and insurance conferences in the US and Europe, and is the author of articles published in both legal and insurance journals and periodicals.