The American Tort Reform Association and staff are deeply saddened by the passing of our longtime counsel and friend, Victor Schwartz, earlier this week. For decades, Victor played an essential role not only in shaping the agenda but carrying out the key programs of ATRA and civil justice reform allies around the country.
Victor long has been one of the nation’s top scholars on tort and civil litigation. He began his career as a law professor and was named the dean at age 32. He subsequently worked for the U.S. Commerce Department, where he developed a model act for product liability law: the Uniform Product Liability Act. In many ways, this was the first example of a significant effort to reform the tort system, setting the course for the agenda that ATRA and our allies have developed and followed since that time.
Victor’s extensive scholarship includes publishing the leading casebook on tort law, published originally with leading American legal scholars and professors William Prosser and John Wade. He authored an influential treatise on comparative fault as well as hundreds of law review articles. The American Law Institute has made Victor a “Life Member.”
Beyond Victor’s extraordinary stature as a legal scholar, however, was his ability to anticipate emerging issues and trends in litigation and legal policy — an expertise he gladly shared with those in the essential work of developing innovative solutions to improve litigation. For decades, every ATRA conference began with Victor, as a keynote speaker, providing updates in the law and where he believed it was heading. ATRA members and allies looked to Victor to understand recent developments, and he was unfailing in his ability to explain complex legal matters in a way that all understood, and in turn recognized why reforms were essential.
“Victor’s legal scholarship and skills were exceeded only by his friendly and kind nature as well as his famous sense of humor. No event or presentation was complete without Victor performing one of his dead-on impressions of former Presidents Reagan or Clinton, Rep. Charlie Rangel or Sen. Arlen Specter, as well as countless others,” said Tiger Joyce, president of ATRA. “Anyone who met Victor became his friend — whether it was a U.S. Senator, a corporate general counsel, a cab driver or a restaurant server.”
“He was a remarkable and gifted teacher who had the rare ability of explaining, in plain language, difficult and complex legal concepts that even a non-lawyer like me could grasp,” said Matt Fullenbaum, ATRA’s vice president for legislative affairs and strategic engagement. “When I joined ATRA in 2003, Victor took me under his wing right away. I received a world-class legal education in his classroom, the Subway restaurant on L Street. Most importantly, though, he was my friend. I know I am a better professional and better person for having known Victor.”
Last year, ATRA named its achievement award, an award which the organization bestows on the most effective leaders supporting legal reform, in Victor’s honor. Doing so is but a small recognition of Victor’s decades of service in developing and carrying out, not only ATRA’s mission, but that of civil justice reform advocates nationwide.
“We are proud of our decades-long association with Victor and will endeavor to carry on down the path that he did so much to establish for ATRA,” Joyce said.
Victor served as general counsel of ATRA for more than 30 years after which the board conferred upon him the status of emeritus counsel in 2023.