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In January, Eric Chaffin ’96L (right) and his law partner, Roopal Luhana, opened Chaffin Luhana Law Firm, a plaintiffs-only boutique focusing on mass tort litigation.
by Amy C. Balfour ’89, ’93
“Their hands resemble claws. They really can’t move them at all. They’re very spastic,” said Eric Chaffin ’96L, a hard-charging plaintiff’s attorney representing the second-largest group of consumers in the country, in a lawsuit against GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) and Procter & Gamble (P&G). “There’s also a lot of atrophy. They’re effectively quadriplegic. It’s horrible.” His clients suffer from devastating physical problems they blame on the denture creams Super Poligrip, made by GSK, and Fixodent, made by P&G. They claim that the zinc-based creams—used to secure false teeth— flushed critical amounts of copper from their bodies, resulting in permanent and crippling nerve damage. 12
Chaffin is the court-appointed coliaison counsel in the Philadelphia denture cream Mass Tort Program and is the court-appointed member of the Plaintiff’s Steering Committee. He is also the federal-state court liaison counsel in the federal MDL denture cream litigation. In January, Chaffin’s firm defeated P&G’s motion to dismiss punitive damages in the Philadelphia litigation. He is now preparing his cases for trial in Philadelphia.
Chaffin’s fast-track career started at Reed Smith in Pittsburgh, followed by a federal clerkship. Next came a stint in the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn. From there he jumped to W & L
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plaintiff’s powerhouses Seeger Weiss and Bernstein Liebhard. Chaffin served as lead counsel or co-counsel on several high-profile cases, including the In re IPO Securities Litigation, which settled for $586 million, and a consumer action involving a $17.5 million settlement for customers defrauded by Dell Financial. In January, he opened Chaffin Luhana, a plaintiffs-only boutique firm focusing on mass tort, securities and whistleblower cases, with Bernstein Liebhard colleague Roopal Luhana. Kara McElroy ’09 joined them as a paralegal. From Reed Smith to his current venture, the common thread has been Chaffin’s concern for the little guy. The son of a West Virginia steelworker, Chaffin was the first in his family to go
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