Michael Hugo is our managing attorney in the recently opened Boston office. Mike is a graduate of Boston College, where he earned his Bachelor of Science degree in economics and business. He went on for postgraduate studies at Harvard University. He was a magna cum laude graduate of New England School of Law, where he earned his juris doctorate in 1982. Mike was a partner in Schlichtmann Conway Crowley & Hugo, the firm upon which the best selling novel and box office hit, A Civil Action was based. He was a founding partner in the Boston firm, Hugo & Pollack, and later the resident partner in the Boston office of Lopez, Hodes, Restaino, Milman & Skikos, where he specialized in pharmaceutical products liability and toxic & environmental torts, prior to joining our firm. Mike has lectured internationally in those areas, and has been a regular lecturer at the Harvard School of Public Health, as well as at several law schools.
Mike is a member of the Massachusetts Bar, as well as the bars of several federal jurisdictions. He has been admitted to practice before the courts of over 30 states and federal jurisdictions. Mike is recognized as a pioneer in vaccine litigation, and has tried numerous cases resulting in many multi-million dollar verdicts. He has long been considered one of the leaders in the silicone gel breast implant litigation, having served as a member of the Settlement Advisory Committee, appointed by the US District Court in Alabama to assist in the facilitation of one of the largest global settlements of a mass tort ever. In addition to that, Mike served as liaison counsel to the Massachusetts Courts for the Breast Implant litigation. He has been active in the litigation of many of the most high profile pharmaceutical cases in the nation. He was instrumental in the Rezulin Litigation as a co-lead deposition counsel, taking the deposition of the former President of Parke-Davis, which lead to many successful verdicts and settlements. He also was very active in the Baycol multidistrict litigation, as well as a crucial member of the discovery committee in the national Vioxx litigation, where his work contributed to the declassification of thousands of documents which Merck had tried to keep from the public eye.
Mike has published many papers and articles on pharmaceutical litigation. Amongst the legal profession, he is considered an authority on mass tort cases, and recently was the lead author of the chapter on Multidistrict Litigation in the leading multi-volume treatise, Litigating Tort Cases, by Thomson West Publishing. Mike is a President’s Club member of the American Association for Justice (AAJ) (formerly ATLA), and has been a member of the Board of Governors and of the Leader's Forum for many years. He has chaired many committees, is the Chair of the Section of Toxic, Environmental and Pharmaceutical Litigation (for his third term as Chair); as well as the Chair of the Vaccine Litigation Group since its' inception in 1983; the Breast Implant Litigation Group; and the Stadol Litigation group all in AAJ. He is a sustaining member and a member of the Board of Governors of the Massachusetts Academy of Trial Attorneys, a sustaining member of the Trial Lawyers for Public Justice, and a Fellow of the Roscoe Pound Foundation. He has received special awards of merit from the United States Court of Federal Claims, where he served several years as a member of that court's Advisory Committee, as well as from several state trial lawyer associations and consumer groups. He is a faculty member on the National College of Advocacy, and has served on several faculties of Lexis/Nexis Mealey Publications seminars.
Mike is spearheading our firm's involvement in the Vioxx and Welding Rod litigation. He was the program chair of the first educational program for lawyers on that topic. He is also participating in our firm’s pharmaceutical product liability litigation. Mike will continue to practice in the area of vaccine liability, bringing our firm to the forefront of that litigation. With the addition of Mike and our Boston office, Brent Coon & Associates is solidly grounded in the pharmaceutical & toxic/environmental tort arenas.
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