Supreme Court

Keller Postman is emerging as a potent force in delivering innovative legal theories that hold up on appeal.

Court of appeals precedents not only lock in trial victories, but also shape the legal landscape for future cases.  That is why corporate defendants hire appellate specialists for high-stakes cases, pushing for legal rules that make cases harder to bring and to win—Keller Postman is well-positioned to fight back.  Crafting creative legal arguments is a point of pride for the firm, and it starts with our attorneys’ distinctive backgrounds.  Our attorneys have attended the top law schools in America, clerked at all levels of the federal judiciary—including four partners who clerked on the United States Supreme Court—and have litigated appeals for plaintiffs and defendants.

Our appellate practice is a critical backstop to every other practice area.  When Keller Postman brings mass arbitration to bear, defendants routinely backtrack, trying to change or dodge the arbitration agreement they wrote.  After procuring court orders blocking changes or requiring arbitration, partner Warren Postman has successfully defended those decisions on appeal, giving us critical ammunition for the next fight.

In mass torts, other firms turn to Keller Postman to defend bellwether victories on appeal, a task which requires distilling years of complex litigation into a simple, compelling brief, with vast consequences for every plaintiff.  In the 3M earplugs litigation, partner Ashley Keller argued the first two bellwether trial victories, defending against 3M’s attempt to nullify not only those wins, but also eliminate the claims of more than one hundred thousand veterans by raising case-dispositive defenses.  Just a month later, Partner JJ Snidow argued an appeal to preserve an injunction the district court entered preventing 3M from undoing its losses by re-litigating long-settled issues in a different venue.  Keller Postman is also leading the way in federal appeals in the Zantac MDL.

For exceptional cases with broad importance for plaintiffs, Keller Postman will parachute in as appellate counsel.  That is how Partner Ashley Keller became counsel of record for Robert Mallory in Mallory v. Norfolk Southern after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled against him.  The firm convinced the U.S. Supreme Court to take the case, and then prevailed.  This victory came against a leading appellate advocate, and despite lockstep opposition from the business community, the federal government, and a consortium of states that lined up behind Norfolk Southern.  The Supreme Court’s decision opened the courthouse doors to plaintiffs who wish to litigate in Pennsylvania.