In this episode of Emotional Damages, Dr. Mark Levy speaks with Michael L. Fox, managing partner of Duane Morris’ San Francisco office and co-chair of the firm’s Products Liability and Toxic Torts Division, whose three-decade career spans toxic tort litigation, mass disaster cases, and complex commercial disputes. Fox traces his path from a Wharton finance student diverted by a legal history course into a litigator who built his practice around the “hourglass” theory of career development — starting broad, specializing deeply, then broadening again as expertise compounds. He and Levy revisit the multi-plaintiff gas line explosion case that first brought them together, using it to unpack how forensic psychiatric experts help separate genuine psychiatric injury from “copycat” or “echo chamber” claims, why the eggshell plaintiff rule makes individual vulnerability assessment essential, and how a bell curve of injury severity (rather than a “barbell” of only the most extreme verdicts) should inform case valuation and settlement strategy. Fox also explains why he deliberately seeks forensically trained experts over treating clinicians, offers concrete advice for expert witnesses on avoiding “canned” testimony, and shares his read on the next wave of mass litigation: digital harm and social media addiction claims among adolescents, and whether the underlying psychiatric science is developed enough to survive Daubert scrutiny.

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