Key Considerations for Working With Expert Witnesses in Class Actions

Sonya Kwon is a Senior Managing Director at Ankura, based in Irvine, California. She leads a team that specializes in the application of statistical, economic, financial, and complex data analyses to legal and regulatory issues. She has over twenty years of experience leading data-intensive matters including consumer class actions, TCPA matters, regulatory and governmental investigations, healthcare litigation, labor and employment disputes, overdraft fee litigation matters, financial and accounting investigations, theft of trade secret matters and entertainment royalty matters, and other cases requiring the analysis of systems, structured data, or complex data modeling. Technically, Sonya has extensive experience in the cost-effective and total quality management of large dataset capture and analysis and has worked with Fortune 100 companies to analyze data from the largest warehouses. She is an expert in data science and has developed numerous relational database design, data quality management, economic modelling, and computer programming courses to fellow employees and clients. She has served as a named expert on dozens of matters involving the collection and analysis of data, statistical analysis, complex data modeling, data integrity, class certification, as well as wage and hour and other class action issues.

Shana E. Scarlett is a partner at Hagens Berman.

Lucus Ritchie is a partner in Pierce Atwood's Litigation Practice Group. Lucus' practice covers a wide variety of complex commercial disputes, with a particular emphasis on class action defense and energy litigation. Lucus regularly appears in federal and state trial courts throughout the country, and also represents clients in arbitrations, mediations and contested administrative proceedings. In each case, Lucus focuses on developing a detailed understanding of his client's business and its goals, and uses advocacy and creativity in order to obtain favorable results in a practical and efficient manner.

Lucus' recent representations include defending a top 10 U.S. bank in a series of class action lawsuits related to the bank's overdraft fee practices consolidated in MDL proceedings in South Carolina and Florida; defending a national check processing company against consumer class action lawsuits consolidated in MDL proceedings in Maine; representing former nuclear generating plants in lawsuits seeking recoveries from the U.S. Department of Energy for its refusal to remove spent nuclear fuel from the plants' sites; and serving as trial counsel to a California state agency in ongoing FERC litigation challenging long-term power contracts executed during the Western energy crisis.

Lindsay D. Breedlove is a partner in the Philadelphia office of Pepper Hamilton LLP. She is a member of the Health Sciences Department and the Antitrust and Competition Section of the firm’s Trial and Dispute Resolution Practice Group. She regularly represents both institutions and individuals in complex civil litigation, specializing in antitrust, class action, and shareholder and fiduciary duty issues.

A substantial portion of Ms. Breedlove’s practice focuses on the health care and life sciences industries, where she litigates on behalf of the key players across the innovation and care delivery spectrum — from biotech, pharmaceutical, and medical device companies to health care providers. Ms. Breedlove also applies her deep industry understanding to advise clients regarding how to avoid litigation risk and liability when making regulatory filings, entering agreements with suppliers and customers, developing marketing strategies, structuring joint venture and license arrangements, and settling litigation.

Ms. Breedlove speaks regularly and has authored numerous articles on antitrust litigation and class action-related issues. She currently serves as co-chair of the American Bar Association’s Class Actions & Derivative Suits Committee and is editor-in-chief of The Woman Advocate for the Litigation Section. She is also an active member of the Antitrust Section. Ms. Breedlove is vice chair of the Philadelphia Chapter of Women in BIO.