Benchmark Litigation

North Carolina

Review

Dispute resolution
Smith Anderson

Smith Anderson is a Raleigh-based business and litigation firm known for its team of trial-tested lawyers. Recipient of the North Carolina Firm of the Year award at the annual Benchmark US awards ceremony for several consecutive years (including once again in 2024), the firm continues to impress local peers and clients, with some partners even hailed by top trial lawyers at white-shoe New York firms who have worked with them. “They were wonderful North Carolina counsel. They played a big role at trial examining witnesses, they were very useful in that regard.” The firm has made a decision to pursue an agenda of staying “strategically neutral” regarding choosing political sides, something noted as being “very smart but very unusual in North Carolina,” and is active in a range of matters from large multi-party, multi-jurisdiction litigation for companies of all sizes to matters for small private businesses and pro bono clients. Smith Anderson has also emphasized intellectual property as a growth area as of late, particularly in situations where this intersects with commercial litigation.
     Michael Mitchell attends to a practice that best exemplifies the commercial litigation/IP crossover. Mitchell represents local agricultural pillar Smithfield, who, with its affiliated company Murphy-Brown (also being defended by Mitchell), is one of the largest pork producers in the US. Over the last several years, numerous local property owners have sued Smithfield and Murphy-Brown claiming that the smell, noise, trucks and dust coming from the hog farm operations have created a nuisance. Some of these cases went to trial in federal court in North Carolina resulting in some large jury awards. The legal costs and jury awards exceed $100 million. Smithfield and Murphy-Brown sought insurance coverage for the nuisance litigation, but the insurers denied coverage. Smithfield and Murphy-Brown then brought this lawsuit in the North Carolina Business Court to enforce their insurance policies against the insurers. All claims against the insurers were settled, with final claim settled in April 2025 just before trial. Another area in which the firm has gained considerable traction is in its product liability capacity, largely on the strength of Addie Ries, who is championed by a client as “energetic, enthusiastic, caring, responsive, intelligent, attentive to detail, and a subject-matter expert [who] kills it, every time.” Ries (who enjoys her fourth consecutive year as one of Benchmark’s Top 250 Women in Litigation) acts with Clifton Brinson for Dynax in approximately 10,000 cases that have been filed in jurisdictions throughout the nation regarding aqueous film-forming foam (“AFFF,” an agent that is used to extinguish “Class B” fires fueled by petroleum) multi-district litigation panel before the District Court of South Carolina. Plaintiffs claim that AFFF manufacturers, as well as Dynax and a multitude of other defendants whose products were used in AFFF, are liable based on the presence in AFFF of certain “PFAS” chemicals, which they allege are biopersistent in the environment and the water supply, bioaccumulative in flora and fauna and toxic to humans. Christopher Smith was engaged by Duke Energy in 2024 to represent them in a matter in which the Town of Carrboro, North Carolina, with support from activist, well-funded national environmental groups, sued the client for liability for global climate change. This is purported to be a first-of-its-kind lawsuit in which a municipality has brought such an action. Mitch Armbruster acts for Piedmont Lithium Carolinas in a regulatory challenge by adjoining landowners to a lithium mining permit issued by the State of North Carolina to the client. On the eve of regulatory trial in February 2025, and after extensive discovery, the petitioners filed a voluntary dismissal without prejudice (leaving the door open for the matter to be potentially re-filed in next 12 months.)