Alexander P. Swanson is a litigation associate in the Los Angeles office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, where he is a member of the Firm’s practice groups for Environmental Litigation and Mass Torts, Life Sciences, and Intellectual Property Litigation. With a focus on life sciences and covering a variety of fields and industries, Mr. Swanson’s practice includes environmental mass tort litigation, environmental regulatory compliance, pharmaceutical patent litigation, and health insurance litigation.

Representative matters include:

• Represent International Paper Company against claims by Harris County, Texas for violation of water pollution statutes in connection with alleged releases of paper mill waste containing dioxins.  Mr. Swanson was instrumental in preparing successful motions to exclude three of the County’s epidemiology and toxicology experts who had sought to testify about the alleged health effects of dioxin exposure based on unreliable scientific evidence.  After exclusion of these experts, a jury trial resulted in a complete defense verdict for International Paper.  Mr. Swanson continues to represent International Paper in a related lawsuit by hundreds of Houston residents for personal injuries arising from alleged exposures to dioxins and PCBs.
• Represent General Electric Company against claims by former workers at a television factory in Taiwan for personal injuries allegedly caused by exposure to chlorinated solvents on the job.  Mr. Swanson prepared experts to testify regarding U.S. standards for proving causation in toxic tort cases and specific causation of cancers claimed by individual plaintiffs.
• Represent a client in cleanup of a site contaminated with lead, arsenic, PAHs, and dioxins under an imminent and substantial endangerment order by the Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC).  Mr. Swanson supervises expert environmental consultants in formulating a response to DTSC’s order and develops arguments for equitable allocation of cleanup costs among other responsible parties.
• Represent Sanofi-Aventis in Hatch-Waxman litigation involving recombinant human insulin.  As an instrumental member of the Gibson Dunn team, Mr. Swanson deposed key witnesses and worked with technical experts to defend against challenges to laboratory testing on the eve of trial.
• Represent Aetna Life Insurance Company against multiple ambulatory surgery centers engaged in a complex scheme of fraud and overbilling.  Mr. Swanson drafted motions for summary judgment and directed verdict that eliminated the defendant surgery centers’ cross claims.  He served as a key member of the trial team that achieved a jury award of nearly $40 million for Aetna.  

Mr. Swanson graduated from the University of Chicago Law School in 2011.  While at Chicago, he worked in the Institute for Justice Clinic on Entrepreneurship, providing pro bono legal services to entrepreneurs in inner-city Chicago.  In 2009, he served as a legal extern for the Honorable Rebecca R. Pallmeyer of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.  In 2008, Mr. Swanson received his Master of Science degree in Insect Science from the University of Arizona, where he studied insect systematics and molecular evolution.  He graduated cum laude with Distinction in Research from Cornell University in 2005, where he received his Bachelor of Science degree in Entomology and was a Presidential Research Scholar.

Mr. Swanson is admitted to practice law in the State of California and before the United States District Court for the Central District of California.