Jonathan Judge

Regulatory Counsel: CPSC & NHTSA 

Jonathan maintains an active regulatory practice before the CPSC and NHTSA, counseling manufacturers of consumer products and motor-vehicle equipment on pre-market compliance, mandatory reporting under Section 15(b) of the Consumer Product Safety Act and Part 573, recall strategy, corrective-action plans, agency investigations, and enforcement defense. His regulatory advice is informed by extensive product-liability experience: he helps clients assess not only the immediate agency issue, but how reporting, recall, testing, and public-communication decisions may shape civil litigation. He works with domestic and overseas manufacturers to coordinate regulatory strategy with the defense of related claims in the United States, and to structure and defend parent companies from subsidiary liabilities, particularly when the parent is overseas.

Jonathan frequently represents companies who wish to vigorously defend their products before agencies, and who need counsel experienced at marshaling engineering and statistics to explain why the product is not at fault.

Product Liability & Complex Litigation

Jonathan defends manufacturers in product-liability litigation involving children’s products, consumer goods, and automotive equipment, including catastrophic-injury and wrongful-death cases, and serves as national coordinating counsel for companies seeking consistent, comprehensive management of product-liability risk across jurisdictions. His trial record includes a complete jury defense verdict for a child-car-seat manufacturer after a multi-week trial in Santa Fe, New Mexico, obtained against two leading plaintiffs’ law firms. He has also obtained complete defense verdicts in product-liability matters across the United States, including Texas, Georgia, Virginia, West Virginia, Missouri, Indiana, and Maryland in cases involving alleged design and manufacturing defects, failure to warn, and regulatory noncompliance.

Jonathan also brings substantial technical depth to product-safety disputes. He is a co-author of a peer-reviewed study in Traffic Injury Prevention combining Bayesian statistical modeling with biomechanics to evaluate injury prevention in frontal sled testing. Outside the law, Jonathan has created statistical models for Baseball Prospectus, including Catcher Framing and Deserved Run Average. That combination is especially valuable in matters where the science is as contested as the law.

Jonathan also advises automotive parts suppliers on their supply contracts and disputes, particularly as the law of requirements and release-by-release contracts continues to evolve.

Enforcement of Arbitral Awards & Foreign Judgments

Jonathan represents award creditors and judgment creditors — including litigation funders and multinational companies — in U.S. proceedings to recognize, confirm, and enforce foreign arbitral awards and court judgments against U.S. assets. He can enforce awards from the arbitral institutions clients rely on most — including CIETAC, SHIAC, HKIAC, SIAC, and the ICC — through the New York Convention and the Federal Arbitration Act. His work extends from recognition or confirmation through collection, including post-judgment discovery, asset tracing, domestication, and execution. Where supported by the facts and governing law, he pursues alter-ego, veil-piercing, and fraudulent-transfer remedies.

Drawing on his trial background, Jonathan focuses on strategic sequencing, building the evidentiary record, and practical recovery, working with foreign counsel, investigators, and the firm’s Private Clients, Trusts & Estates attorneys to tailor strategy to the debtor’s corporate or trust structure and the location of recoverable assets.

Jonathan also defends U.S. parties responding to cross-border asset restraints and discovery requests, including Mareva freezing orders and discovery applications under 28 U.S.C. § 1782.

For matters with sufficient scale and collectibility, Jonathan is willing to discuss alternative fee arrangements — including contingency and hybrid structures — that align with the anticipated recovery.

Magnitude®: Computational Claims Simulation

Jonathan created Magnitude®, ArentFox Schiff’s computational claims-simulation platform. Magnitude uses Monte Carlo methods, rather than generative AI, to model the implications of counsel’s expressly stated assumptions across a range of potential outcomes. Each simulation is custom-built and reviewed by experienced trial counsel, producing full probability distributions rather than a single intuitive estimate. By making the evaluators’ reasoning explicit, testable, and mathematically coherent, Magnitude informs individual claim valuation, portfolio-level risk aggregation, reserve analysis, settlement strategy, litigation financing, and scenario planning as facts or legal theories change. It can also incorporate forecasts from different evaluators into one blended assessment.

Recognition & Professional Activities

Recognized in The Best Lawyers in America (Product Liability Litigation – Defendants, 2026); frequent speaker before ICPHSO, the Product Liability Advisory Council, and the Practicing Law Institute; former law clerk to the Hon. David M. Lawson, U.S. District Court, E.D. Michigan.