Automotive and Transportation

Whether counseling automotive clients on acquisitions, divestitures, electric and autonomous vehicle (E/AV) and mobility solutions, joint venture formation, dealer development or terminations, or commercial contract negotiation and compliance programs, clients rely on us to accurately gauge automotive trends and assess risk as they consider expanding, retooling, or simply refueling their core business operations.

We have extensive experience negotiating M&A deals, cross-border transactions, e-commerce and information technology agreements, E/AV and connected vehicle solutions, and providing general and specialty legal advice for all other corporate and commercial matters faced by suppliers and OEMs.

We also represent entities throughout the supply chain in risk management planning and response, as well as negotiating and drafting long term, volume specific, tooling and other purchase and sale supply chain agreements.

Building on decades of experience in large, discovery-intensive automotive cases, our collaborative team of lawyers, legal specialists, and legal technologists understands the strategic and technical aspects of developing and executing a leading discovery effort.

With this experience, our team efficiently and effectively manages the discovery process. Our goal is to minimize the impact of the litigation, particularly intense discovery, on personnel and ordinary operations. We do this by focusing on proportionality and developing solutions that are cost-effective and centered on achieving results that are reusable in the future.

We understand the need for collaborative, consistent, and defensible written responses, and we understand the need from the outset of a case to develop the company story, timelines, and defense strategies.

Our approach is to leverage in-house resources where present and practical, without creating a structure where client personnel are repeatedly asked to perform the same task over and over again.

Our long-standing relationships with federal and state legislators and regulators assure our clients voices are heard in a range of forums on the most critical policy matters, including import and export issues, legislation and lobbying, and regulation and compliance.

Experienced in providing full coverage compliance representation, we advise numerous vehicle manufacturers and suppliers on reporting and recalls, investigations, civil penalty proceedings, safety-standard compliance, interpretation requests, rulemakings, voluntary standards, labels, and warnings.

By maintaining productive relationships with federal and state lawmakers and regulators, we are able to advance our automotive clients’ interests by:

• Lobbying Congress and the executive branch on National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) reauthorizations
• Advocating for revision of NHTSA, CPSC and CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) standards
• Defending industry interests at the state and federal levels against restrictions on specific vehicles such as motorcycles and all-terrain vehicles
• Counseling automotive clients in appearances before congressional oversight and other committees examining federal agency rules and regulations
• Helping automotive clients secure legislative and agency funding for research and development projects involving new technologies
• Monitoring pending legislation from our government policy centers in Washington, D.C., Lansing, Michigan, and Springfield and Chicago, Illinois

We procure and protect the licensed, patented, trademarked and copyrighted innovations that define our automotive clients’ brands.

Many of our attorneys and patent agents have backgrounds in automotive and transportation technologies, and in mechanical, electrical, and computer engineering, enhancing the depth of our understanding of their business and legal issues.

We offer comprehensive and thought-leading counsel on IP litigation, copyright, patent, trademark, licensing, and trade secrets issues—involving nearly every major automobile system.

We provide automotive companies with sophisticated guidance for everything from financing technology purchases to protecting their own technological advances. We stay attuned to our clients’ understanding of the technology industry, technology transactions, and related legal implications, which allows us to achieve innovative, market-driven solutions.

As a national leader for high-stakes cases, we have tried and arbitrated cases throughout the country for our automaker and manufacturing clients, including international arbitrations.

Dykema is recognized as the national go-to firm for bet-the-company product liability, wrongful death, defect, property damage, and recall claims, including class actions. We represent clients in business contract and tort disputes, antitrust litigation critical B2B cost-recovery, recall, supply chain, and troubled supplier litigation.

We also have an active national dealer litigation practice representing OEMs. With this deep bench and experience, our clients also look to us to represent them throughout the country as national, regional, and local counsel in auto-related discovery management and litigation.