Thomas Hill, former General Counsel for EHS Operations; General Electric Co.

 

Thomas Hill served as the General Counsel for the General Electric Co. Global Environmental Health and Safety operations until his retirement in 2017. In that role, Mr. Hill was the senior lawyer managing a global team of lawyers and environmental specialists responsible for the creation and implementation of GE's EHS risk management programs. The Global EHS organization also coordinated GE's Employee health and safety compliance policies.

 

Mr. Hill was also responsible for representing the company in some its most complex litigations in the areas of environmental compliance, regulatory toxic tort litigation, insurance and risk management.

 

He managed GE's mass tort exposure including asbestos, breast implant, nuclear radiation, medical devices and other chemical and environmental exposures. He was the lead lawyer representing GE in the Hudson River Superfund cleanup and potential Natural Resource Damage claims. He coordinated GE's insurance recovery efforts for asbestos and environmental costs recovering well in excess of one billion dollars.

 

He has represented GE in cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, the House of Lords in the United Kingdom and other jurisdictions including France, Italy and Taiwan.

 

He was a key industry leader in developing and managing efforts to create an Asbestos Trust Fund Claims Facility under Federal Law. He has testified before Congress concerning changes to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.

 

Mr. Hill remains involved in proactive legislative reform, and consults with business in the development of internal health and safety policies. He has been a board member the Civil Justice Reform Group, a public policy group supporting tort reform at the state level. He served on the Board of the Lawyers for Civil Justice, as well as the board of Searle Institute for Law and Economics at George Mason Law School.

 

He served as Co-Chair of the ABA committee on Litigation Management and was Editor of the ABA report on Litigation Management: "Radical Solutions to Litigation Management." He served on the Advisory Board for the RAND Institute's Monogram on the impact of Daubert in the Federal Court System and the Federal Judicial Centers Desk book on Expert Evidence. He was a co-author of the CPR Monograph on Mass Claims Resolution Facilities.

 

Prior to joining GE in 1991 Mr. Hill was a partner in a litigation firm in Detroit, Michigan where he tried mass tort, environmental and products liability cases.  He has argued cases in multiple jurisdictions and handled appellate matters before the Michigan Court of Appeal, the Michigan Supreme Court and the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeal.
He is a frequent lecturer on litigation management, trial strategies, and product liability law.

 

Mr. Hill earned his B.S. from Wayne State University and his J.D. (with honors) from the Michigan State University Law School.