Ellen Relkin is a partner at Weitz & Luxenberg, P.C. in New York City and Cherry Hill, New Jersey. She has represented Plaintiffs in complex medical device, pharmaceutical and toxic tort cases for forty years. She is certified by the New Jersey Supreme Court as a Certified Civil Trial Attorney. She has been elected as a “Super Lawyer” and a “Best Lawyer” of New Jersey and New York as well as AV rated by Martindale-Hubbell. She is licensed to practice in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and the District of Columbia and numerous federal trial and appellate courts.
She has served in many federal and state leadership roles in product liability cases including presently serving as co-lead counsel in the Exactech Polyethylene Orthopedic Products Liability Litigation and co-lead counsel in the In Re: JUUL Labs, Marketing Sales Practices, and Products Liability Litigation. She serves on the Executive Committee in the National Prescription Opiate Litigation, MDL. In 2017, she was appointed as co-lead counsel to the In Re: Farxiga Products Liability MDL. She was also appointed to the Plaintiffs Executive Committee in the federal In Re: Stryker LFit CoCr V40 Femoral Heads Litigations and she served as lead and liaison counsel in the parallel New Jersey MCL. She was previously lead counsel in the New Jersey In Re: Stryker Rejuvenate/ABG II Modular Hip Litigation where she was a member of the negotiating team for a settlement compensating 3,000 plaintiffs for an amount in excess of one billion dollars.
Ms. Relkin was co-lead counsel in the DePuy ASR MDL litigation where she played a key role in negotiating the $2.5 billion settlement for 8,000 victims of the failed hip implant. She was a member of the trial team in the landmark Vioxx case McDarby v. Merck, that obtained a $13.5 million verdict and successfully defended the compensatory verdict before the New Jersey Appellate Division, 949 A.2d 223 (N.J. App. Div. May 29, 2008). This precedential case established that New Jersey recognized a heeding presumption in pharmaceutical product liability litigation.
Ms. Relkin is an elected member of the American Law Institute and serves as an Adviser to the Restatement of the Law Third, Torts Miscellaneous Provisions. She is an appointed member of the American Bar Foundation. She serves on the Board of Governors of the New Jersey Association for Justice, she is the Co-Chair of the Mass Tort Law Committee and Co-Chair of the Mass Tort Law Section of the New Jersey Association for Justice. She is former President of the National Civil Justice Institute.