Charles
S.
Cassis
Member
Charles S. Cassis is one of the founding partners of Brown, Todd & Heyburn PLLC, one of the legacy firms to Frost Brown Todd LLC. He was instrumental in forming the Litigation Department of the Firm and served as its Chairman for several years.
Mr. Cassis is a member in the Firm's Litigation Department and his practice involves general trial litigation and appellate practice. He has had over one hundred trials and presented approximately seventy appellate arguments. Mr. Cassis has handled cases in several federal and state courts, and has argued before the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Seventh Circuit Courts of Appeals. He has also been before the U.S. Supreme Court for Marathon Pipeline Company in which the Court declared parts of the 1984 Bankruptcy Code unconstitutional.
Mr. Cassis has served as Special Justice to the Supreme Court of Kentucky on three separate cases during 2007.
Mr. Cassis was involved in the tobacco litigation for one of the major cigarette manufacturers. He led a team in the individual health and smoking cases for which this Firm was one of six national counsel. In 1999, he was part of the trial team that successfully completed a four month trial involving five individual plaintiffs against the three major tobacco manufacturers. This was the first consolidated case of individual plaintiffs in the U.S. Mr. Cassis was also involved in the tobacco litigation by the national labor unions against the cigarette industry. Likewise, he was active in the Master Settlement Agreement, and the suits that accomplished that task. In November, 2001, he successfully represented the cigarette industry before the Kentucky Supreme Court in a class action suit for intervention by individual plaintiffs in that litigation.
He has represented Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corporation, RJR Tobacco Company, Lorilard Tobacco Company, Westinghouse Electric, Chevron, Black & Decker Corporation, General Electric Corporation, Bristol-Myers Squibb, American Cyanamid, The Williams Company, Ashland Inc., Marathon Oil Company, Motorola, Inc. and others in product liability cases.
He has also represented certain insurance carriers in extra contractual claims made against them throughout the Midwest and Southeast.
In addition, in 1998, he successfully defended a constitutional challenge to the Kentucky Product Liability Act in the Supreme Court of Kentucky. In that same case (Adams v. Westinghouse), the Court also rejected plaintiffs’ claim for a spoliation of evidence cause of action. A complete analysis of various aspects of the Restatement of Torts dealing with product liability was argued and decided in that class action litigation.
Likewise, Mr. Cassis has successfully defended several constitutional challenges to over $2 billion worth of Kentucky bond issues before the Kentucky Supreme Court. He has handled and argued several important constitutional issues before the Kentucky Supreme Court, including the class action constitutional challenge to the Kentucky Intangible Tax Statute. He has also successfully defended commercial institutions, including several lender-liability cases and other bank litigation, including claims of fraud and misrepresentation.