William T. Nagle

William T. Nagle has over 25 years of experience in representing clients across the United States and around the world. Before joining Bowles & Verna in 2001, Mr. Nagle practiced law in San Francisco with Celebrezze & Wesley, an insurance coverage boutique law firm, handling insurance coverage opinions and defense of bad faith claims. He currently handles litigation matters including work for manufacturers in both product liability lawsuits and commercial litigation matters. He has been recognized as a Super Lawyer for his work in product liability.

Mr. Nagle’s practice also includes defense of class actions, supply agreement disputes, trade secret claims, product recalls, insurance coverage advice, contract drafting/negotiation and alleged product mislabeling/Prop 65 litigation. 

He has managed trademark and patent litigation, real estate litigation, insurance coverage disputes, defense of employment claims including Private Attorney General Act claims, claims under collective bargaining agreements and clickwrap web agreement disputes.

Mr. Nagle’s real estate practice has involved the defense of commercial real estate disputes, boundary disputes, inverse condemnation claims, property evictions, and litigation of Americans with Disabilities Act claims.

Mr. Nagle has experience handling consumer product recalls on behalf of American and Taiwanese manufacturing companies in the U.S., UK, Argentina, Brazil, Singapore, Spain, Italy, France, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Mexico, Colombia, Malaysia, and the Philippines. 

Mr. Nagle has tried and arbitrated more than 25 cases. He has defended manufacturing defect claims in various states in the last 5 years including in New York, Iowa, Colorado, Illinois, Arizona, Georgia, Washington and throughout California. The product liability matters include product defect claims asserted against heavy machinery equipment manufacturers and personal injury claims involving compressed gases such as propane, helium, and hydrogen. Many of the personal injury claims have involved millions in claimed damages and significant personal injuries including amputations and traumatic brain injuries.

One growing area of expertise for the product liability team (Mr. Nagle, Richard Ergo and Cathleen Huang) at Bowles & Verna is in hydrogen fuel system accidents. In 2023, the team completed 5 years of aggressive litigation in a major hydrogen accident in Louisiana, resulting in three separate lawsuits for commercial, personal injury and property loss damages, where more than $80 million of damages were alleged. With governmental mandates for cleaner energy and zero-carbon fuel objectives and U.S. federal investments of $7B into hydrogen hubs, the development and use of hydrogen technologies is increasing rapidly. As the hydrogen industry evolves, new incidents are likely to occur. Because of that our hydrogen team co-founded “HyLA” (Hydrogen Litigation Association) to provide a forum and resource for companies and attorneys involved in this evolving field. HyLA’s inaugural meetings will take place on April 18 and 19, 2024 at American University Washington College of Law in Washington, D.C. 

Mr. Nagle has a wide array of experience litigating disputes in federal and state courts, as well as federal and state courts of appeal. Mr. Nagle has also represented clients with contract disputes and international interests in Afghanistan and Taiwan. 

Personal Information

Mr. Nagle was born in San Francisco and has lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for most of his life. He has been happily married to Sharon Nagle for almost 30 years after meeting her on the first day of law school. Sharon and Bill raised three children in the East Bay and were actively involved in their school, swim club, and sporting activities. Mr. Nagle is an avid beach volleyball player who takes advantage of every opportunity to play. 

Highlights of Mr. Nagle’s Experience

• Represented a U.S. manufacturer in a two-month jury trial in December and January of 2022/2023 arising from a product defect claim. The matter was successfully resolved before closing arguments.
• Successfully defended an attempt at consolidation of multiple product defect actions before the Multidistrict Litigation Panel and obtained an order denying the centralization of various actions pending in different states. 
• Representation of a U.S. manufacturing client in a worldwide recall of propane cylinders, including in North America, South America, Europe, Asia, and Oceania.
• Trial team member engaged in a two-week trial that resulted in the dismissal of a multimillion-dollar products liability case.
• Trial team member engaged in a three-month trial over a high exposure trade secret misappropriation claim.
• Conducted audits of manufacturing sites for a U.S. manufacturer at different manufacturing facilities to evaluate implementation of additional quality control procedures, revision of warnings, and revision of owner manuals for the purpose of reducing occurrences of accidents and mitigating against consumer class action lawsuits.
• Prevailed on summary judgment in favor of a propane cylinder manufacturer for two separate actions in the last three years seeking millions in damages in Orange County and Los Angeles County Superior Courts.
• Dismissal of a California class action seeking millions in compensation by successfully asserting that the California 5-year statute for bringing a claim to trial had lapsed.