Bill Beck has more than 35 years of experience as a trial lawyer. Bill’s national practice consists of trials, arbitrations, administrative proceedings, mediations and negotiations to resolve high stakes, technical, complex disputes involving environmental liability and insurance coverage.
Toxic Tort. Bill is particularly experienced in defending major toxic tort litigation, including both mass actions and class actions. His key wins include summary judgments and voluntary dismissals of a large group of high-profile, Erin Brockovich-created, hexavalent chromium exposure class actions, mass actions and individual suits; defense verdicts in a five-week groundwater jury trial and a complex odor trial; the nominal mass settlement of a 2,000-plaintiff groundwater and air case; and defeating class certification on pleadings alone. He reached and implemented some of the most challenging and controversial class settlements in recent times. Bill is presently defending numerous complex putative class actions, mass actions and individual toxic tort and odor nuisance cases in New York, South Carolina, Alabama, Illinois, Kansas and Missouri. Bill is comfortable and experienced cross-examining and developing experts in technical fields such as epidemiology, risk assessment, molecular biology and carcinogenesis, air dispersion modeling, groundwater modeling, geotechnical engineering and analytical chemistry.