Mr. Ismail is an AV® Peer Review Rated partner with the firm. He practices in the area of products liability, insurance coverage, commercial and general civil litigation. He has represented clients in bench and jury trials, in state and federal courts, as well as in mediations and other proceedings.
In his products liability practice, Mr. Ismail has represented Pfizer, Bayer, Wyeth, Dentsply, Perrigo, Intervet and Akzo Nobel in cases involving pharmaceutical drugs, medical devices and other medical, dental and veterinary products. He has defended clients against class action lawsuits in a variety of settings. In his insurance coverage practice, Mr. Ismail has represented insurers, including Zurich, AIG and Everest, as well as policyholders, including Dentsply International, Inc., in coverage disputes. In his commercial and general civil litigation practice, Mr. Ismail has litigated business disputes on behalf of clients ranging from large corporations, including Pfizer, Republic Services and Genesis Health Ventures, to a variety of smaller companies. On referral from pro bono organizations, Mr. Ismail has also represented indigent clients in a variety of proceedings.
Mr. Ismail was born in the tropical island of Ceylon, now Sri Lanka. He grew up in the coastal city of Colombo and studied at St. Thomas’s College in the central highlands. His family later emigrated, first to Zambia in central Africa, where Mr. Ismail completed his secondary education, and then to the United States.
After earning his bachelor’s degree at Columbia University in New York, Mr. Ismail covered local and state news as a reporter and photographer for the Calvert County Recorder in Prince Frederick, Maryland. During his five years at the newspaper, he won numerous reporting and editorial awards from the Maryland-Delaware-District of Columbia Press Association.
Mr. Ismail attended law school at the University of Maryland, graduating cum laude and with the Order of the Coif. He also served as Executive Editor of the Maryland Law Review in 1992-93. He began his legal career at Goodell, DeVries, Leech & Dann in 1993, practicing in the areas of pharmaceutical liability and insurance coverage litigation. He left briefly to practice white-collar criminal litigation at Hogan & Hartson, LLP, but later returned to Goodell, DeVries, Leech & Dann to focus on civil litigation. He has been a partner since 2004.
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Columbia University (B.A. 1982)
University of Maryland (J.D., cum laude, 1993)
Order of the Coif
Executive Editor, Maryland Law Review
AmJur Awards for Civil Procedure, Commercial Paper
Bridgewater M. Arnold Prize for Commercial Paper
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Court of Appeals of Maryland, 1993
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United States District Court for the District of Maryland, 1994
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Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, 1995
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United States Supreme Court, 2003
- United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, 2010
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SELECTED CASES
Trice, Geary & Myers, LLC v. CAMICO Mut. Ins. Co., 2011 WL 6425701 (4th Cir. Dec. 22, 2011) (reversing summary judgment against client policyholder and directing entry of partial summary judgment in its favor regarding duty to defend)
Federal Ins. Co. v. Dentsply Int’l, Inc., 2007 WL 4150664 (M.D.Pa. Nov. 19, 2007) (upholding position of client policyholder that excess insurance was triggered after application of collective trigger and single occurrence limit to underlying primary insurance coverage for multiple claims arising from product line failures)
Pfizer Inc. v. Stryker Corp., 348 F.Supp. 2d 131 (S.D.N.Y. 2004) (granting partial summary judgment entitling client manufacturer that divested specialty prosthetics business to multimillion-dollar indemnification from acquiring entity for post-divestiture products liability claims) (of counsel to Pfizer)
Arnold v. Intervet, Inc., 305 F.Supp.2d 548 (D.Md. 2003) (agreeing with client manufacturer of animal vaccines that plaintiffs’ tort claims were probably preempted but rejecting federal question jurisdiction because federal regulation extinguished, not created, causes of action)
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PROFESSIONAL, CIVIC AND TEACHING APPOINTMENTS
Appointed by the Governor of Maryland to the Trial Courts Judicial Nominating Commission for Baltimore City, 2007-2011; 2011-2015
Adjunct Professor (Advocacy), University of Baltimore School of Law, 2011
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PUBLICATIONS
Co-author of book chapter on “Impact Of Insurance Policies On Product Litigation,” in Current Law, Strategies and Best Practices in Product Litigation (Pract. Law Inst., 2009).
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Martindale-Hubbell is the facilitator of a peer review rating process. Ratings reflect the confidential opinions of members of the Bar and the Judiciary. Martindale-Hubbell Ratings fall into two categories - legal ability and general ethical standards.
