Ben Boyd's practice is focused on civil litigation, with over 30 years of experience in a variety of corporate, product liability and commercial disputes. Ben has experience with direct defense of aging services facilities in lawsuits asserting professional liability, personal injury, negligence, elder abuse, wrongful death and other related claims.
Ben provides strategic advice and representation, as well as access to the extensive legal expertise found in DLA Piper's offices across the globe, to CEOs and GCs at Fortune 500 companies. Ben has extensive experience representing corporate clients in a wide variety of disputes (eg, fraud, breach of contract, employment, negligence) in the Commonwealth of Virginia, the District of Columbia, Maryland and Florida. He has also represented manufacturers and distributors of consumer products, pharmaceuticals, food products and motor vehicles in state and federal courts throughout the USA. One of his product liability cases, Geier v. Honda, was decided by the United States Supreme Court and is an oft-cited authority for the scope of federal pre-emption.
Ben took the Florida Bar in 2007, after 20 years of practice, in order to lead a team of DLA Piper lawyers based in Tampa and Washington, DC that represented a large tobacco company in its defense of approximately 9,000 individual lawsuits filed in Florida. Ben has also represented clients in Florida lawsuits related to copyright infringement and accounting malpractice. Notably, he represented the family of the former President of Venezuela, Carlos Andres Perez, in a dispute over whether the President Perez's remains would be returned to Venezuela after he died in Miami.
Ben was DLA Piper's National Hiring Partner from 2005 to 2016. He and Diane Ross, the Firm's former National Recruiting Director, led a team that recruited and evaluated lateral partners and new associates for all of DLA Piper's US offices. Ben and Diane were focused on DLA Piper's efforts to hire a highly diverse group of lawyers to meet our clients' needs and expectations. Ben was the Co-Managing partner of the DC Office from 2014 to 2016.
Ben has been involved in numerous pro bono cases involving, among other things, representing a prisoner on death row, fair housing, drug testing of government employees, Social Security disability, sexual harassment and debtor's prisons. Ben is currently on the Board of the DC Affordable Law Firm, an innovative not-for-profit law firm founded by Georgetown Law School, Arent Fox and DLA Piper, that is dedicated to low bono work – providing affordable legal services for those with modest incomes who do not qualify for pro bono assistance.
