Stephen E. Embry is a Member of Frost Brown Todd LLC and is a member of the Firm's Fire & Explosion and Construction and Products Liability Groups. Mr. Embry frequently defends partici­pants in mass disaster litigation and frequently defends participants construction process in actions across the nation involving large mass torts.

Mr. Embry is a national litigator and advisor who specializes in developing solutions to complex litigation and corporate problems. He chairs Frost Brown Todd’s Mass Tort Practice Group. This Group was formed as the National Litigation Group by Mr. Embry’s partner, Carl Henlein, who still plays an active role in the Group and in many of the cases which the Group handles.

While the practice of the Group, and of Mr. Embry in particular has dealt with a broad range of problems; from its inception, the mission of the Group was to find simple, successful and elegant solutions to the problems posed by complex and substantial litigation, primarily in the mass tort arena. As a philosophical matter, the Group approaches litigation problems by early identification and development of comprehensive visions and strategies that, while frequently outside the bounds of common litigation handling and management techniques, have consistently yielded successful results.

The resume of the Group is attached and its experiences are detailed and well known. In many of the matters, Mr. Embry provided the lead; in others he played a support role. In still others, he played no role at all other than lending advise and guidance where needed. The Group believes in finding and matching the correct skill set and abilities of its team members to the task.

Some of Mr. Embry’s own significant experiences are:

Serving as National Coordinating Counsel to a large international insurer and thousands of its insureds in claims involving a commonly used building cladding product. In this regard, Mr. Embry assumed the role of National Coordinating Counsel several years in advance of actual litigation. He undertook responsibility for developing the overall defense plan and strategy and the technical aspects of the case, including the selection and retention of experts in various fields. Because the overall exposure exceeded $1 billion but each individual case represented relatively modest damages, Mr. Embry developed a process whereby the cases could be directed to mediation early in the life of the matter before many of the costs were incurred. The plan required an up front investment of time and effort to create the general defenses, a litigation plan and the format for evaluating each individual exposure.

He also formulated an alternative billing arrangement that shared the risks of the transactional costs between the lawyers and the carrier that allowed an aggressive litigation approach at a practical cost. As a result, 95% of the cases were mediated to settlement within the reserve levels set by the carrier. The cases that were not settled were successfully tried.

Representing a nationwide group of fast food franchisees seeking to recover commercial damages due to the inappropriate sale and distribution of a genetically engineered product. Mr. Embry developed a strategy by which three favorable plaintiffs’ jurisdictions were selected and then disparate actions involving the claims of various members of the plaintiff group were brought in each location. By matching the strengths of the various plaintiffs to the jurisdiction in which the law, the judicial philosophy and demographics were most favorable, the clients ultimately were able to settle the litigation for an amount in excess of the actual damages (tens of millions) suffered.

Serving as a lead defense counsel in the One Meridian Plaza Litigation in Philadelphia which involved damages in excess of $400 million for construction related claims, and co-chaired the product and services defendants steering committee. Although he was hired late in the litigation, Mr. Embry engineered the development of a defense group composed of various service providers. This group was able to successfully resist and present an overall defense to the substantial claims presented by the building owner and focus their energies on a common theme. At Mr. Embry’s urging, this Group also ultimately retained the services of a Group facilitator to negotiate intra-defendant disputes and assist in help adjudicating and resolving the claims.

Representing a number of parties in a series of multi-million dollar commercial construction claims concerning alleged defects in prefabricated metal buildings and residential foundations. In this instance, Mr. Embry grouped various cases together for discovery purposes to reduce transactional costs and developed a legal strategy designed to obtain favorable legal rulings on various contractual clauses upon which the designers of the buildings relied. Once this was achieved, the matters were favorably resolved.

Mr. Embry played a lead role in the defense of several product and service providers in the San Juan Dupont Plaza Litigation, which arose out of a fire which caused the deaths of 97 people and injured hundreds more. The National Litigation Group pioneered a strategy of an initial on site investigation of the fire on behalf of unnamed product defendants who anticipated lawsuits and the formulation of a joint defense group between and among that group. These efforts culminated in the ability to effectively and successfully try the case without the incurrence of back breaking transactional costs that historically provided settlement leverage to the plaintiffs’ layers in single incident mass torts. The litigation arising out of the fire constituted the largest mass disaster lawsuit in history and included 1,470 plaintiffs seeking $1.8 billion in damages from 226 defendants. The case was tried to a defense verdict after 13 months.


Mr. Embry has played a lead role in a number of other matters in which his creative and innovative approaches led to solutions that worked as opposed to those that just generated more conflict and cost. From the formulation of group defense strategies that brought together disparte group of entities to pursue a common theme, to alternative billing, to trial where necessary and at the right place and right time, to formulation of mediation strategies and procedures, and to every place in between, Mr. Embry and his Group has formulated and implemented unique and successful strategies for dealing with complex “mass torts.” Mr. Embry, and his Group, remains devoted to its original mission: finding litigation solutions that make sense and solve problems.