Rosario M. Vignali

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Russ Vignali is a tenacious advocate who focuses his litigation practice on the defense of products liability matters and related commercial disputes in New York state and federal courts. He also handles a variety of claims in the general liability area and has experience with related insurance coverage matters. Russ joined Wilson Elser in 1982 out of law school and developed his service approach within a firm culture that values a high level of responsiveness and open communication with clients.

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Firm/Organization: Wilson, Elser, Moskowitz, Edelman & Dicker LLP
Blogs: Product Liability Advocate

Latest Articles

The discovery phase in your products liability lawsuit has been completed and it’s time to decide the next course of action before proceeding to trial. One possibility, of course, is to move for summary judgment to knock out the entire case pending against your client. However, you have concluded that, despite the strengths of your case, there are enough “issues of fact” to make the exercise probably useless. Have you considered instead a Motion for…
In this third and last installment of our three-part series examining the type of deposition questioning that can derail your opponent’s expert and set up a successful Daubert challenge, we will look at Daubert’s insistence that the expert’s opinions be based on “reliable methodology” before opinions can be presented to the jury. What exactly does a reliable methodology under Daubert mean? Essentially, it requires that the expert’s opinions be based on information gathered in the…
In the first part of this series, we examined how effective deposition questioning about an expert’s education, training and experience can ultimately call into serious question the expert’s qualifications to serve as an expert witness at trial and survive a subsequent Daubert motion. We examined how some experts, despite their seemingly extensive and impressive credentials, may actually have no experience in the relevant field or may be exaggerating the depth of their past work experience.…
Deposing your adversary’s liability expert is not only a chance to delve into the details of the expert’s opinions, but the deposition also presents a great opportunity for defense counsel to explore the sustainability of the expert’s opinions going forward. In the context of a products liability case, the plaintiff’s expert’s deposition, if used wisely, can set up an effective challenge to the expert’s proffered opinions under the Federal Rules and can result in the…
New York’s appellate departments are now unified with respect to their interpretation of Article 10(a) of the Hague Convention on the Service Abroad of Judicial and Extrajudicial Documents in Civil or Commercial Matters (Hague Service Convention). The issue of whether Article 10(a) of the Hague Convention permits service of process by mail to a foreign country in the absence of an objection from the state of destination has now been resolved in New York. The…
A federal district court judge in New York City’s Southern District, applying Virginia law, recently invoked the concept of a manufacturer’s “post-sale duty to warn” to hold an automobile company potentially liable for failing to warn about an alleged defect in a car that it technically did not even manufacture. The ruling came in the context of the General Motors Ignition Switch multidistrict litigation (14-MD-2543).…
It’s probably common knowledge to even a novice product liability practitioner that a manufacturer can be held liable for a defect in a component part supplied by another company that is integrated into the manufacturer’s end product.  After all, under most commonly held notions of product liability law, the product manufacturer is subject to liability for a defect even when the defect arises solely from a flaw in a component part manufactured or supplied by…
When we wrote back in November 2013 about 3D Printing and Product Liability Law, we predicted that the 3D printing revolution “will challenge our long-held notions of product liability law and the common assumptions made regarding the liability of various entities in the chain of distribution.” Our blog challenged the reader to think about who the manufacturer would be under the make-believe fact scenario we posed for an injury allegedly caused by a 3D-printed…
One of the more frustrating aspects of defending power tool cases occurs during the deposition of the plaintiff – at the point where he attempts to describe in minute detail how his accident happened. Then, at trial, just when you think you have the plaintiff “nailed down” to a specific accident scenario, his testimony seems to describe a completely different event. With enough wiggle room in his testimony, a well-coached plaintiff can describe his accident…
When a corporate defendant is sued in a federal court outside its home state, the issue of where its deposition will be conducted can become a bone of contention. The traditional rule, accepted by most practitioners, is that the deposition will take place at the corporate defendant’s principal place of business as opposed to the forum district. This “rule” may require plaintiff’s counsel to take the time and incur the expense to travel a long…