RIDGEFIELD PARK, N.J. – Seeger Weiss LLP is proud to announce that James (Jacksy) Bilsborrow, a nationally respected leader in class action, mass tort, and environmental litigation, has joined the firm as a partner.
“Jacksy is a rare talent and we’re thrilled to have him on the Seeger Weiss team,” says cofounding partner Christopher Seeger. “His skill sets blend perfectly with our multidisciplinary approach to complex litigation.”
Frequently appointed to multidistrict litigation (MDL) leadership roles, Bilsborrow has a distinguished track record representing victims of corporate malfeasance. As a member of the Plaintiffs’ Executive Committee in the Dicamba Herbicides Litigation, he helped secure a settlement with Monsanto on behalf of farmers valued at over $400 million. As class counsel in PFOA and PFOS litigation, representing the exposed property owners of Petersburgh, New York, he was a leading force in successfully obtaining the first decision in the New York state courts to affirm the certification of a medical monitoring class.
Bilsborrow held prominent roles throughout the Deepwater Horizon Litigation, working closely with the Phase One trial team that ultimately secured a finding against BP of gross negligence in the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Bilsborrow also served on the Medical Benefits Settlement team that negotiated BP’s commitment to provide compensation and preventive treatments to Gulf Coast shoreline residents and to workers involved in the spill cleanup. Finally, he was a member of the appeals team that successfully defended the economic portion of the BP settlement all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
“Seeger Weiss gets incredible results in high-stakes cases,” says Bilsborrow. “The firm has distinguished itself as an unquestioned leader of the national plaintiff’s bar, and I’m excited to join this team. Most of all, I’m looking forward to working together to obtain the results our clients sorely deserve.”
An active member of several professional organizations, Bilsborrow serves on the New York State Bar Association’s Committee on Attorney Professionalism and the New York City Bar Association’s Professional Responsibility Committee as well as its Working Group on Litigation Funding. A member of the American Association for Justice (AAJ), in 2015 he was one of only 12 nationwide who were selected to attend the organization’s Leadership Academy, a program designed to equip promising attorneys to become the next generation of top-tier trial lawyers. Bilsborrow is also a member of the board of directors of the Complex Litigation e-Discovery Forum. An elected officeholder since 2016, he is also a Kings County Committee member.
Bilsborrow’s active pro bono practice includes serving as court-appointed counsel to two former death row inmates who alleged that they were improperly confined for years in unconstitutional conditions of solitary confinement. Following oral argument, a unanimous panel of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the constitutional rights of his clients were violated and that the Due Process Clause limits the state’s ability to subject inmates to indefinite conditions of solitary confinement.
Prior to joining Seeger Weiss, Bilsborrow spent a decade at Weitz & Luxenberg. He clerked for the Honorable D. Brooks Smith of the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals as well as the Honorable Christopher C. Conner of the U.S. District Court, Middle District of Pennsylvania. Bilsborrow holds a J.D. from the William & Mary School of Law and a B.A. from the University of Chicago.
One of the nation’s preeminent plaintiffs’ law firms, Seeger Weiss is best known for multidistrict mass torts and class actions in both state and federal court. From offices in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts, the firm has represented over 10,000 individuals, companies, and governments across the U.S. who have been injured or defrauded on a massive scale. Since its founding in 1999, it has led many of the most complex and high-profile cases in the country: the National Prescription Opiate Litigation, which the Washington Post called “the largest federal court case in U.S. history“; 3M Combat Arms Earplug Products Liability Litigation, which the Minneapolis Star Tribune called “one of the largest mass torts ever“; the ongoing “Dieselgate” scandal; the sprawling multistate litigation on behalf of survivors of child sexual abuse; and the history-making Football League Players’ Concussion Injury Litigation.