Brian S. Prestes

Brian Prestes specializes in leading and coordinating multi-firm defense teams in mass litigations, including products liability, mass tort, and complex commercial actions. Brian has nearly two decades of experience in many of the nation’s most significant MDLs and mass litigations, including: Trinity highway safety products; Roundup® herbicides; the Las Vegas hepatitis C outbreak; lead paint; Teflon® nonstick coatings; and prescription drugs including Yaz®, Yasmin®, Vioxx®, Seroquel®, and Adderall®. Brian has been lead or national coordinating counsel in matters that have involved tens, hundreds, and thousands of individual personal injury cases, as well as state and federal False Claims Act cases, government investigations, and class actions.

Brian’s experience and skill in directing multi-firm defense teams and crafting both litigation and resolution strategies, combined with Brian’s advocacy skills, have contributed to some of our clients’ most successful results.

Brian presently serves as national coordinating counsel for Trinity Highway Products in highway-safety products litigation. When Trinity retained Bartlit Beck in 2016, it faced nearly seventy personal injury cases in state and federal courts around the country, four class actions, over a dozen state False Claims Act cases, and a nearly $700 million federal False Claims Act judgment. Working closely with Trinity and its existing outside counsel, Brian coordinated the defense team across all cases and jurisdictions and led the development and execution of Trinity’s defense. Since retaining Brian and Bartlit Beck, Trinity has significantly reduced the number of personal injury cases without a single adverse jury verdict, obtained dismissals of the U.S.-based class actions for zero dollars with only one remaining, obtained dismissals of eleven of the fifteen state False Claims Act cases, and won a complete victory in the federal False Claims Act case.

Brian previously served as coordinating and strategy counsel for UnitedHealthcare in the Las Vegas hepatitis C litigation brought by plaintiffs claiming to have contracted hepatitis C during procedures performed at clinics that were in defendants’ networks of healthcare providers. Brian provided strategic direction, coordinated six trial teams, and spent thirty days on trial in litigation encompassing over forty individual cases, pending before twenty different state-court judges. Bartlit Beck tried one case, resulting in a favorable jury verdict and subsequent settlement of half of the pending cases, and began trying a second case, which settled one month into trial, along with the other remaining cases.

Brian’s clients have described Bartlit Beck as “unrivaled—as counselors, strategists, and trial lawyers,” and as “a firm filled with lawyers with the intellect of Supreme Court clerks, the mentality of trial lawyers, and the work ethic of investment bankers.” The American Lawyer has frequently showcased Brian’s successes for the firm’s clients, including NL Industries in the lead-paint litigation.