Jacqueline Seidel is a New York-based partner in King & Spalding’s Trial & Global Disputes practice and serves as Deputy Chair of the Firm's Automotive and Transportation Litigation Team.  Ms. Seidel defends multi-national companies in complex class and mass action litigation pending in both state and federal court. She frequently partners with clients at the outset of a matter to develop and implement all-inclusive exit strategies for large-scale bet-the-company litigation. Often, such strategies include liaising with clients and virtual law firms to plan a long term, systematic exit strategy and/or global resolution, structuring and implementing court-approved comprehensive settlement programs and successfully resolving large groups of cases. She has also successfully managed - as either national coordinating counsel or as strategic counsel - putative class, mass and individual actions alleging false advertising, unfair business practices, unfair and deceptive trade practices, consumer fraud, consumer protection, and a wide range of common law personal injury and property damage claims.

In recognition of her work representing Fortune 500 automotive and pharmaceutical and medical device companies in bet-the-company litigation, she has been named a New York "Rising Star" in class action and product liability defense by Super Lawyers.

While Ms. Seidel has represented clients in a wide range of industries, including the automobile, safety equipment, pharmaceutical, medical device, consumer goods, insurance, reinsurance and media industries, recently her practice has centered on negotiating and executing resolutions of some of the largest and most complex litigations in the automotive industry. 

Ms. Seidel represented client, Toyota, in its settlements of the “unintended acceleration” economic loss class actions that involved the consolidation of nearly 200 class actions and required close coordination of efforts with the client’s virtual law firm partners handling various aspects of the litigation and governmental/regulatory investigations.  At the time this class action litigation was settled, it represented the largest automotive settlement in US history.  Ms. Seidel was also involved in the establishment of a court-ordered “intensive settlement process” for the related personal injury and wrongful death product liability cases.  This settlement process effectively resolved the majority of individual product liability cases in the litigation. 

Ms. Seidel also assisted in the negotiations and drafted relevant documents for resolving another billion-dollar class action settlement on behalf of Toyota resulting from the Takata airbag recall that implicated multiple automobile manufacturers and she continues to manage and coordinate roll-out of the multi-year settlement relief.  This settlement was finally approved in 2017 and set the tone for subsequent similar settlements by several other auto manufacturers.  Ms. Seidel has also successfully resolved other class actions including the Sienna sliding door and Prius IPM class action settlements (the latter is awaiting final approval).

Recently, Ms. Seidel was part of the team that successfully resolved hundreds of matters on behalf of an integrated energy company involving product liability allegations related to a certain herbicide.  The cases were brought  by the litigation’s highest-threat plaintiffs’ counsel and many were pending in one of the most plaintiff-friendly jurisdictions in the country (St Clair County, IL) including a four-case consolidated trial setting that was resolved at the eve of trial.  Since the resolution of those cases, thousands of lawsuits have been filed by individuals who were exposed to the product at issue and Ms. Seidel continues to serve as co-strategic counsel in these cases.