Areas of Practice
- Appellate Litigation
- Business & Commercial Litigation
- Environmental & Toxic Torts
- Products Liability
Education
- Paul M. Hebert Law Center, Louisiana State University, J.D., 1983; Order of the Coif
- Louisiana State University, B.S., 1980
Bar Admissions
- Louisiana, 1983
Court Admissions
- 5th Cir., 1984
- E.D. La., 1983
- M.D. La., 1983
- W.D. La., 1983
William Schuette is a partner in the firm's Business & Commercial Litigation Practice Group. Since 1983, he has practiced in the areas of commercial, toxic tort, product liability, and professional liability litigation. He has served as lead counsel and co-counsel in numerous trials in Louisiana state and federal courts. Mr. Schuette has served as a seminar speaker on evidentiary issues, architects' and engineers' liability, insurers' extra-contractual liability, and complex litigation.
Mr. Schuette has represented several Fortune 500® companies in asbestos litigation since 1995. He has personally handled all phases of litigation from pretrial through appeal. The cases have included single plaintiff cases, multi-plaintiff consolidations, and class actions, and have involved many different products containing asbestos, including sheetrock, joint compounds, and other building materials. He represented a major manufacturing defendant in a seven-month trial of a one-hundred-twenty-plaintiff consolidation, resulting in a favorable verdict. Mr. Schuette has extensive experience examining the medical and scientific expert witnesses employed by plaintiffs. He has a thorough knowledge of the epidemiology, medical, and scientific issues raised in asbestos litigation, and has handled many cases before the United States District Courts' Panel for Multi District Litigation (MDL).
Mr. Schuette served as National Coordinating Counsel for Asbestos Litigation for a Fortune 500® building materials and paper manufacturer/retailer. In this position, his responsibilities included:
- Supervising and supporting local counsel handling thousands of asbestos lawsuits
- Developing national defense strategies, themes and positions
- Supervising the development and implementation of litigation support databases and document imaging protocol
- Identifying, evaluating, and preparing expert and corporate witnesses
- Identifying and retrieving relevant historical documents and supervising their review
- Coordinating formal and informal discovery responses and document productions
He is a longtime resident of Baton Rouge.
Noteworthy
- AV® Peer Review Rating in Martindale-Hubbell
News
- Schuette to Speak at Chinese Drywall Litigation Conference
- Jones Walker Litigation Team Plays Key Role in Defeating Mass Asbestos Litigation Class Certification
- Jones Walker Litigators Defeat Class Certification in Mass Asbestos Suit
Presentations
- "Settlement: Lost Opportunities + Hidden Costs", October 11, 2010, Product Liability Advisory Council's Fall Conference
- "Multi-District Litigation Proceedings and Class Action Issues", June 18, 2009, Chinese Drywall Litigation Conference, HB Litigation Conferences
Publications
- "The Black Box: Nondeliberative Decision Making"
DRI Today, June 21, 2011 - "A Question of Values: Appraisers and the Appraisal Process"
American Journal of Family Law, Volume 25, Number 1, Spring 2011
Memberships
- American Bar Association (Member, Sections on Tort Trial And Insurance Practice Section, Litigation, Products Liability, Environmental and Toxic Tort, and Commercial)
- Defense Research Institute (Litigation; Industry-wide Litigation; Technology; Environmental and Toxic Tort)
- Louisiana State Bar Association
