Daily Business Review Selects Shook Product Liability Co-Chair as a “Distinguished Leader”

Hildy Sastre, co-chair of Shook’s Product Liability Litigation Practice, has been selected as a “Distinguished Leader” in the 2022 Florida Legal Awards by the Daily Business Review. The award is given to Sastre for “remarkable achievements” in 2021. 

One year into Sastre’s leadership role as Product Liability Litigation Practice co-chair, Shook earned a finalist spot among ALM’s Practice Groups of the Year. Sastre is among an elite group of women trial lawyers with experience defending Fortune 100 corporations—including pharmaceutical and medical device companies and a variety of other manufacturers—in national multidistrict litigation (MDL), consolidated proceedings and mass tort claims, many of which involve tens of thousands of plaintiffs. She is on the short list of women trial lawyers asked to work on some of the most complex and challenging cases in the country. 

Sastre often acts as trial counsel in bellwether cases—those that courts and parties select to test their arguments, with the goal of moving the overall mass tort litigation toward resolution. In 2021, Sastre had two major wins for her clients. The U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts ended a years-long MDL against Shook’s client, GlaxoSmithKline, granting GSK’s motion for summary judgment concerning the safety of the drug Zofran. The decision disposed of all 430 cases in the MDL. Shook has served as national counsel for GSK in the Zofran litigation since the creation of the MDL in 2015.

Shook also won an important defense verdict for Sanofi in the second bellwether trial in multidistrict litigation involving the drug Taxotere. A Louisiana jury returned a defense verdict in less than two hours after a two-week trial. The win earned the trial team the runner-up spot for ALM’s Litigation Daily “Litigators of the Week.” (The first bellwether case ended in a defense verdict in 2019 which also received recognition from ALM.)

A champion for women lawyers, Sastre serves on Shook’s executive committee and previously the Women’s Management Council, and is focused on the development of young lawyers. She served two terms as chair of the Defense Research Institute’s Women’s Mentoring Committee and the Young Lawyers Diversity Committee as part of her commitment to enhance the careers of women lawyers.

Sastre will be recognized along with other honorees in the legal community for professional excellence in the annual Florida Legal Awards ceremony May 19 in Miami, Florida, and will be acknowledged in two special reports to be published in May and June.