Carl Rowley is a first-chair trial lawyer who defends complex, high-profile cases.
He is a member of the Product Liability Advisory Council, has been listed in The Best Lawyers in America® for 12 consecutive years, won Lawyers Media’s Legal Champion and Top Defense Verdict of the Year Awards, was named one of America’s Top 100 High Stakes Litigators® in 2023-2024, was selected to Super Lawyers® in 2012-2016 and 2022-2023, and has been rated AV Preeminent by the Martindale-Hubbell® Peer Review Ratings™ system for decades.
Carl’s cases and verdicts have been covered by the National Law Journal, the American Lawyer, the New York Times, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and other national media outlets.
Carl has defended high-stakes business, personal injury, and class action lawsuits in courtrooms throughout the United States, including as lead trial counsel in the defense of billion-dollar damages claims. He first-chaired the largest defense jury verdict in the history of tobacco cost recovery litigation, a three-month trial with 49 witnesses prosecuted by 37 hospitals and hospital systems.
Carl has decades of experience in preparing and cross-examining expert witnesses on complex epidemiologic, biostatistical, damages model, causal inference, product design, addiction, and scientific issues. He has served as lead trial counsel in complex commercial, wrongful death, individual smoking and health, and asbestos-synergy lawsuits. Carl has defended class actions, cases alleging false or misleading product labelling, consumer protection cases, targeted marketing lawsuits, mass consolidations of thousands of plaintiffs, environmental contamination lawsuits, and state attorneys general cases.
In addition to his role as in-house counsel to the firm and co-chair of its product liability practice, Carl has served on the firm’s compensation committee, management nominating committee, associate review committee, as chair of its mass tort practice and consumer products practices, and as co-chair of its tobacco practice. His books on jury instructions, now in their third edition, have been in continuous publication for more than 30 years.
