As a named shareholder of Simmons Hanly Conroy, Mr. Hanly is an experienced trial lawyer and litigator who has litigated, managed and tried numerous complex jury cases throughout the United States in virtually all areas of civil litigation for more than 30 years. He is renowned for his exhaustive trial preparation, imaginative trial strategies, nearly photographic memory of the contents of documents and tightly controlled and disarmingly-effective cross-examinations.

For the first 20 years of his career, Mr. Hanly was a national trial counsel and coordinating and settlement counsel to the world’s largest, vertically-integrated asbestos company in its asbestos products liability cases; in that capacity he oversaw more than 100 local law firms and handled hundreds of thousands of cases.

In the last decade, Mr. Hanly has represented plaintiffs exclusively in a variety of mass tort and other complex civil cases and played a leading role in the settlement of thousands of pharmaceutical cases, resulting in recoveries for the firm’s clients in excess of $300 million. Between 2008 and 2010, Mr. Hanly was lead counsel to a small, publicly-traded company in its antitrust suit against an industry giant, resulting in a settlement of $32 million for the company and a $10.5 million contingency fee for counsel.

Between 2010 and 2013, Mr. Hanly spent substantial time on two high-profile cases: the first, Chambers v. Merrill Lynch, was a class action on behalf of Merrill financial advisors claiming lost deferred compensation benefits, resulting in a $20 million dollar settlement and a separate payment by the defendants of more than $5 million in attorneys’ fees; the second, Jean-Charles v. Perlitz, was a set of consolidated actions on behalf of 24 indigent Haitian boys, who were sexually abused by a now-convicted pedophile, against the Society of Jesus, Fairfield University and others for negligent supervision of the pedophile, resulting in a $12 million settlement.