Ellen Relkin

Ms. Relkin, whose practice focuses on medical device and pharmaceutical product liability, and toxic tort matters, has represented plaintiffs injured by defective medical products with a recent focus on the generation of failed metal-on-metal hip implants.

She serves in leadership capacities appointed by courts as the Co-Lead Counsel of the In Re: DePuy ASR Multi-District  Litigation (MDL) and the Lead and Liaison Counsel for the New Jersey In Re: Stryker  Rejuvenate & ABG II Modular Hip Implant Litigation as well as a member of the Plaintiff Steering Committee of the In Re: Biomet Hip Implant Litigation. 

She had served on the court-appointed Executive Committee of the MDL involving the birth control patch Ortho Evra, and as the Plaintiffs’ Liaison counsel in the New Jersey consolidated litigation involving the oral contraceptives Yaz, Yasmin and Ocella.

In April 2006, she was part of the trial team that secured a $13.5 million verdict (case # ATL L 1296-05) against Merck in a failure-to-warn case involving Vioxx and the risk for heart attack, and she successfully defended the compensatory damage verdict on appeal.

Ms. Relkin, who is Certified by the New Jersey Supreme Court as a Civil Trial Attorney, is an elected member of the American Law Institute as well as the Summit Council. She is an active member of the American Association for Justice (past chair of its Toxic, Environmental, and Pharmaceutical Torts section); the New Jersey Trial Lawyers Association, where she serves on the Board of Governors; the New Jersey and New York Bar Associations and the American Bar Association, where she was co-chair of the Pharmaceutical and Medical Device Subcommittee of the ABA Section of Litigation Mass Torts Committee. She is also Treasurer of the Roscoe Pound Civil Justice Institute.   She is a frequent lecturer nationally at continuing legal education programs and lectures annually at the Institute for the New Jersey Institute for Continuing Legal Education’s program on Mass Torts in New Jersey, as well as the law update for the annual New Jersey Trial Lawyers Association Boardwalk convention.

She has published law review articles in the Cardozo Law Review and the Dickinson Journal of Environmental Law and Policy and numerous other legal publications with her most recent article entitled "Punitive Damages Involving New Jersey Defendants" just released in the ABA Newsletter Mass Torts Litigation, Fall 2014, Vol. 13, No. 1.

In addition, Ms. Relkin serves on the board of advisors for the BNA Product Safety and Liability Reporter, The Toxics Law Reporter, and the MDEX Daubert Reporter.

Her litigation areas include: metal-on-metal and modular hips including Stryker Rejuvenate and AGB II modular stems, DePuy ASR and Pinnacle, Biomet Magnum M2a and Wright Conserve metal-on-metal hips, and the Zimmer Kinectiv modular hip.   She also represents women injured by the Yaz and Yasmin birth control products, as well as women who had Power Morcellators used during laparoscopic hysterectomies.

Key Verdicts 

• 13.5 Million (2006;  W&L secures verdict in N.J. Vioxx trial)
• 1 Billion (2014; Global Resolution Reached in Lawsuits over Stryker Rejuvenate and ABG II Failed Hips)