COVID-19 Vaccine Cross-Border Liability and Compensation

Photo by Frank Augstein / Reuters

Date:	Tuesday, December 22, 2020
Time:	8:00 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. PT / 11:00 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. ET
Register:	This event has passed.

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Program

The first doses of newly-approved vaccines for COVID-19 are slowly rolling out to the public, but manufacturer concern about liability for potential side effects could reduce vaccine availability in some countries. In addition, the lack of an effective compensation system raises fairness concerns for those who may suffer adverse reactions and could discourage people from rolling up their sleeves for the greater good.

The RAND Institute for Civil Justice (ICJ) and the RAND Kenneth R. Feinberg Center for Catastrophic Risk Management and Compensation (Feinberg Center) invite you to a webinar to discuss the challenges in facilitating the global distribution of COVID-19 vaccines and preventing concerns over liability and compensation from affecting the vaccine supply chain and the uptake of the vaccine by the public.

Featured Speakers

Anthony R. Brown

Anthony R. Brown is Senior Legal Counsel with Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance. With Gavi since 2005, as an innovative and solutions-oriented lawyer, Mr. Brown advises on the range of issues affecting a global health partnerships with over 9 billion in financing over its 5-year strategic period. He has been instrumental in the set up and operations of Gavi’s innovative financing mechanisms that have helped Gavi mobilize and channel more funding to immunization programmes in low-income countries and achieve predictability in funding streams. He co-led projects to increase efficiencies of Gavi’s governance and operational structure.

As a business partner to Gavi’s country programme team, he works with his clients to ensure maximum use of Gavi investments. Mr. Brown has been the legal lead on the design and development of the COVAX Facility and COVAX AMC and serves on the COVAX Partners Task Force on Indemnity and Liability issues associated with the procurement and delivery of early doses of vaccines against COVID-19.

From 2015 – 2016, Mr. Brown was on a secondment with the CGIAR System Organization, a global agricultural research partnership, where, as Acting General Counsel, he helped lead a major governance transition. Collaborating with Government funders and implementing partners, he also developed the organization’s new partnership financing agreements. Previous to Gavi, Anthony worked with a litigation law firm and he started his career in New York with the strategy consulting firm of Booz Allen & Hamilton.

Mr. Brown is a graduate of Columbia College and earned his J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Law School and his M.B.A. from the Wharton School. He currently serves on the Board of Directors and is Chair of the Audit Committee of the Global Health Council.

Lloyd Dixon

Lloyd Dixon is a senior economist at the RAND Corporation and Director of RAND’s Kenneth R. Feinberg Center for Catastrophic Risk Management and Compensation. He has expertise on insurance, compensation, and liability issues. For California’s Fourth Climate Change Assessment, he investigated the impact of changing wildfire risk on California’s residential insurance market. He has examined the prevalence of flood insurance across the country and, following Hurricane Sandy, assessed the costs and benefits of a flood insurance affordability program for New York City. He recently completed a study on the implications of state and local government risk management practices for FEMA’s Public Assistance program. He is currently analyzing options for a federally backed pandemic risk insurance program.

Dixon has examined compensation and liability policies in a number of different settings. Following the September 11th terrorist attacks, he described and evaluated the complex web of insurance, charity, government, and tort payments that provided assistance to individuals and businesses harmed in the attacks. He has examined the incentives potentially responses parties have to provide assistance in the immediate aftermath of a disaster and is currently investigating the impact of compensation funds on post-disaster litigation.

Dixon holds a B.S. in engineering and a B.A. in political science from Stanford University and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of California at Berkeley.

Dionna K. Litvin

Dionna K. (Deedee) Litvin joined Merck’s Office of General Counsel to assist with the defense of the VIOXX® mass tort litigation in the United States. She manages product liability cases, including vaccine cases, in the U.S., Europe, Asia and Latin America. Prior to Merck, Deedee was a litigation partner with a major law firm.

Since the pandemic emerged, Deedee has been supporting advocacy for pandemic preparedness, including liability and compensation for COVID-19 vaccines, for countries in which these solutions do not yet exist.

Nicholas M. Pace

Nicholas M. Pace (J.D.) is a senior social scientist at the RAND Corporation. He has contributed his expertise in justice system organization-related research methodologies to numerous projects involving the law, the courts, and judicial decisionmaking, often involving large scale, groundbreaking qualitative and quantitative data collections. He recently led studies that have included an examination of the process by which petitions for Presidential pardons are evaluated by the Department of Justice, the setting of maximum caseload limits for publicly-funded defense counsel in state courts, an analysis of attorney time expenditures for Federal public defenders, and an examination of issues related to the use of alternative compensation systems following a catastrophe.

Other work has included exploring ways to reduce costs associated with pretrial discovery of digital information, helping to conduct a national survey of organizations providing services to victims of crime, describing the dynamics of class action litigation, describing transparency issues related to class action settlements, examining the impact of statutory reforms on costs and outcomes in medical malpractice cases, and leading a comprehensive study of the workers’ compensation courts in California. He has also helped to accomplish an in-depth evaluation of the Civil Justice Reform Act of 1990 and its effects on judicial case management, cost, and delay in Federal district courts; analyzed jury verdict outcomes; and helped develop national standards related to the electronic filing of pleadings and other legal documents in courts of law. Currently he is leading work related to setting caseload limits for public defenders in additional state courts, a national survey of corporate counsel regarding the use of business-to-business arbitration agreements, and a major survey of adult Americans to better understand how the civil justice system is utilized in the immediate aftermath of injuries and illnesses.

Peter J. Todd

Peter J. Todd, Partner at Hodge Jones & Allen Solicitors, is a practicing attorney from London, England. For almost 30 years he has practiced in product liability litigation for claimants and has special expertise in cases involving very rare serious permanent disablement caused by vaccination and has secured awards of compensation in respect of numerous different vaccines under the UK statutory vaccine injury scheme. Recently he acted for 86 people in the UK with narcolepsy, a serious autoimmune brain injury, caused by the 2009-10 pandemic swine flu vaccine ‘Pandemrix®’, in a claim against the pharmaceutical corporation GlaxoSmithKline.