Bill Cash III

Levin Papantonio

316 South Baylen St.

Pensacola, FL 32502

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Areas of Practice

General counsel
Litigation

Education

Juris Doctorate; summa cum laude; Capital University Law School; Columbus
Bachelor of Arts degree in Urban Geography with a minor in Economics; Ohio State University; Columbus, Ohio

Bar Admissions

Florida
Ohio (inactive)
Illinois
Supreme Court of the United States
U.S. Court of Appeals, Second Circuit
U.S. Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit
U.S. Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit (inactive)
U.S. Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit
U.S. District Court, Northern District of Florida
U.S. District Court, Middle District of Florida
U.S. District Court, Southern District of Florida
U.S. District Court, Northern District of Ohio
U.S. District Court, Southern District of Ohio
U.S. District Court, Northern District of Illinois
U.S. District Court, Southern District of Illinois
U.S. District Court, District of Nebraska

Professional Associations and Memberships

The Florida Bar Appellate Practice Section
American Association for Justice (past)
Florida Justice Association, (past)
American Bar Association (past)
Chicago Bar Association (past)
Illinois Trial Lawyers Association (past)
Ohio State Bar Association (past)

Selected Published Works

Multiple publications, including:
Book Chapter, Anatomy of the Personal Injury Lawsuit, 4th ed., 2015
Is it Time to Rethink the MDL?, The Trial Lawyer, Summer 2015 (cover story)
Multidistrict Litigation 101: How a Tort Becomes a Mass Tort, Florida Justice Association Journal, Mar/Apr 2015

Representative Decisions

Edwards v. CSX Transportation, 983 F.3d 112 (4th Cir. 2020). Won reinstatement of an environmental class action that had been dismissed on federal preemption and state-law grounds. This important case on behalf of the people of Lumberton, North Carolina has been featured on NBC News, in the New Yorker, and in The Intercept. Lead author of appellate briefs and argued at the Fourth Circuit.

Miley v. Belkin Int’l, No. 20STCV00033 (Cal. Super. Ct. Sept. 7, 2021). Argued and defeated opponent’s motion for summary judgment on the issues of product label misrepresentation and the reasonable consumer standard. This case is a class action alleging deceptive practices in the portable battery market. Lead author of brief.

Rich v. Simoni, No. 14-0998 (W. Va. Apr. 10, 2015). Argued and won a decision strengthening the ethical standards for all attorneys in that state. The high court adopted his position unanimously over the objection of two other parties.

Kerns v. Lamot Industries, No. 3:16-cv-76-RV/EMT, 2017 WL 2903348 (N.D. Fla. June 1, 2017). Won a plaintiff’s motions for summary judgment over an employer in a Fair Labor Standards Act case.

In re Pradaxa Prods. Liab. Litig., MDL No. 2385, 2014 WL 321656 (S.D. Ill. Jan. 29, 2014). Lead author of a successful motion challenging confidentiality designations by the defendant. The issues included the proper interpretation of German and European privacy laws. Some of the materials disclosed were later discussed in the British Medical Journal’s cover story, Dabigatran: how the drug company withheld important analyses (July 23, 2014).

In re Accutane Litig., 234 N.J. 340 (2018). Key author of a brief opposing the adoption of the federal Daubert standard in New Jersey. The high court unanimously refused to displace New Jersey’s protective standard with the federal standard sought by the drugmaker defendant.

Childers v. Escambia County, No. 2022-CA-409 (Fla. Cir. Ct. July 5, 2022). Represented Escambia County, Florida in dueling mandamus and declaratory judgment actions. Argued and won motion dismissing opponent’s entire case.

Classes/Seminars Taught

Dozens of solo lectures and panel discussions in at least eight states.

 

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Bill Cash III is Levin Papantonio’s general counsel.

As general counsel, Cash’s role is to represent the firm in its external affairs, such as in litigation involving the firm itself; negotiating contracts on behalf of the firm; handling the firm’s insurance program; lobbying and government relations; and other outward-facing connections.

Cash also provides oversight internally within the firm by serving on its Management Committee; setting internal policies on topics such as file management, human resources, financial oversight, and the responsible use of IT and artificial intelligence; serving as a mentor to newer attorneys; and researching in complex or novel legal questions that affect clients and the firm.

Cash became general counsel after a 16-year career as a litigator representing the firm’s clients in mass torts and class actions in a variety of forums. He has taken or defended over 300 depositions, developed and cross-examined dozens of expert witnesses, served on the trial team of eight major trials, argued about ten federal and state appeals, engaged in written practice before the U.S. Supreme Court, and written on multiple subjects relevant to the firm’s core practice areas. As an associate, Cash was the lawyer responsible for properly handling thousands of individual plaintiffs’ settlements. He is a fierce advocate of direct, modern writing in law.

Highlights of Cash’s career include representing the family of a young man who was Tasered to death by sheriff’s deputies in a Southern jail; appearing at the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation and successfully advocating for the formation of multiple MDLs in the venue he wanted; cross-examining the advocate of junk “brain science”; representing a footless man against a retaliatory landlord (damages were doubled); and representing Escambia County’s board of county commissioners in a novel case involving employee benefits. Cash also sued and successfully evicted a delinquent horse from a barnyard stall (the horse’s owner filed a fraudulent bankruptcy, which was dismissed), and successfully sued a U.S. airline into changing its fraudulent ticketing practices.

He has developed and teaches the Paralegal Practice Series for the firm’s staff and was the original editor of the MTMP guide, “The Nuts and Bolts of Mass Torts.” He has also guest-lectured on products liability at his alma mater.

In law school, Cash was research editor of the law review, one of the two students representing his school in moot court, and served as a judicial extern to U.S. District Judge Algenon L. Marbley (S.D. Ohio) and U.S. Circuit Judge Jeffrey S. Sutton (6th Cir.), as well as research assistant to Prof. Bradley A. Smith (former chairman of the Federal Elections Commission). He finished law school ranked third in his class (summa cum laude), and then moved to Pensacola to serve as an elbow law clerk to U.S. District Judge M. Casey Rodgers (N.D. Fla.). Living in Pensacola meant sharing a town with Levin Papantonio, and at the conclusion of his clerkship he was fortunate to be hired as an associate, then be elected partner.

Cash has been interviewed by the New York Times, National Public Radio’s All Things Considered, Law360, and print and television media in Florida and elsewhere.

Pensacola is home, but Cash also enjoys wintering in his condo in Chicago, hiking and camping in the American West, biking through cornfields at dawn, and reading on everything from science to architecture to history. He also holds the world record for riding the “L” train to every station in Chicago in the fastest time in a single day. Cash credits his mother with giving him a lifelong love of reading, all of his business skill, and his creative thinking.