Ryan C. Hudson

Over the past two decades, Ryan Hudson has worked with or against many of the nation’s most respected litigation law firms in state and federal trial and appellate courts across the country. He has deep experience in complex litigation and appeals involving a range of industries and claims for relief under state and federal laws—many times creating or expanding the law. Ryan has served as counsel in a variety of complex cases, class actions, mass actions, and multi-district litigation proceedings (MDLs), for both plaintiffs and defendants. Ryan’s approach to litigation is shaped by his experiences, which include:

• Plaintiff’s Cases. Pursuing plaintiff’s cases at law firms in Dallas and Kansas City, Ryan has created and pursued innovative case strategies and recovered several hundreds of millions of dollars for clients in a handful of cases. These successes include architecting and leading the strategy and briefing in three civil RICO cases that each resulted in a nine-figure class recovery. Ryan has pursued several nationwide class actions asserting novel claims for relief under a variety of federal and state laws and statutes, including civil RICO, the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (the TVPRA), the Lanham Act, products liability, business torts, breach of contract, antitrust, fraud, consumer protection, unjust enrichment, and intellectual property (patent, copyright, trademark, and trade secrets). 
• Defense Cases. Ryan spent a decade working as an associate and a partner at preeminent defense litigation law firms in Dallas and Kansas City. Working alongside several of the most sophisticated litigation defense teams on both coasts, he defended dozens of complex cases, white collar criminal cases, and state and federal class actions in trial courts and on appeal throughout the United States.
• Federal Law Clerk. Ryan began his career as a federal law clerk for then-Chief Judge John Lungstrum of the District of Kansas, gaining insights on how courts address and resolve civil and criminal cases, along with multi-district litigation (MDL) proceedings.
• Lecturer, Advisor, and Adjunct Professor. Ryan has been repeatedly invited as a law school lecturer, moot court advisor, and adjunct law professor on topics including class actions, MDLs, civil RICO, products liability, complex litigation, and design thinking, at the University of Kansas School of Law and UMKC School of Law. He also writes articles and lectures to other lawyers on a range of topics involving civil procedure, complex litigation, and MDLs.
• Law + Design. Ryan also has spent thousands of hours working with graphic designers, UX software designers, and trial graphics experts, in both litigation and while working on two litigation start-up companies he co-founded. He applies a Law + Design approach from the onset of a case, which has led to victories in cases that others deemed “too complicated” to explain.

At Sharp Law, Ryan has taken a primary role in several class actions and mass actions. Among other successes, Ryan and his team have pursued and successfully recovered:

• $345 million from Pfizer based on claims for civil RICO and state antitrust violations involving the sales and marketing of the EpiPen.
• $264 million from Mylan based on claims for civil RICO and state antitrust violations involving the sales and marketing of the EpiPen.
• $147 million from BP for a civil RICO claim for fraudulent royalty underpayments.
• $35 million from Marathon Energy for a breach of lease claim for royalty underpayments.
• $6 million from USA Taekwondo and its insurance companies for violations of the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act and negligence claims involving several former Olympic athletes.
• $5 million against Wells Fargo for a Servicemembers Civil Relief Act claim involving several veterans whose automobiles were illegally repossessed.

In addition, Ryan tries to help advance the law and ensure that other lawyers have the same level of training and mentoring he benefited from as a young lawyer. He has lectured repeatedly to the Second Chair Program (a program launched by the Federal Public Defender for the District of Kansas) and helped shape the training program for new federal criminal defense lawyers in Kansas. He also worked with law professors and students at UMKC Law School, along with the District of Kansas Federal Public Defender’s office, to use design thinking and graphic design to help make the procedural maze of federal criminal procedure more understandable and transparent for criminal defendants, their families, law students, law clerks, and the general public. This multi-year project, which received significant funding, resulted in the “Map of the Federal Criminal Process.” Ryan also has worked with United States Senators on both sides of the aisle in Congress to help improve federal laws and to protect athletes and other victims of forced labor and services, and he has consulted with multiple federal prosecutors and federal law enforcement officers on innovative ways to utilize the RICO Act and the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA) to curb the interstate activities of individual and corporate bad actors.