HarrisMartin's Lumber Liquidators Flooring Litigation Conference Speaker Profiles

Dan is one of the nation's most respected and experienced attorneys in the area of construction product defect litigation involving mass torts, class actions or individual lawsuits (condominiums and multi-family).

For over 25 years, Dan has focused his practice on complex civil litigation, successfully representing thousands of owners in a wide variety of defective construction product suits, class actions, and various mass torts and recovering more than $1.25 billion for his clients in numerous states throughout the country. He frequently collaborates with other attorneys in order to assemble the most effective team possible. Dan has also been lead, co-lead or steering committee member in a number of successful MDL or class actions.

Dan is a frequent lecturer and writer on a variety of defective construction products, insurance, and consumer mass tort related disputes. He has been quoted by a variety of media outlets over the years including the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, New York Times and Lawyers Weekly to name a few. He has been named as a member of the Legal Elite and Super Lawyers in North Carolina on numerous occasions. Dan is the past chair of the NC Bar Association, Construction Law Section.

Dan’s recent experience includes serving as co-lead counsel in MDL No. 2514 against Pella Windows & Doors in Federal Court in Charleston, SC before the Honorable Judge David Norton. Dan has also served as lead counsel in MDL No. 2333 against MI Windows and Doors in Federal Court in Charleston, SC before the Honorable Judge David Norton. He is co-lead counsel in a MDL 2495 against Atlas Roofing Corporation in Federal Court in Atlanta, GA before the Honorable Judge Thomas Thrash, Jr. He has also served as a member of the Plaintiffs' Steering Committee (Co-chair Science and Expert Committee) for the MDL 2047 involving Chinese Drywall. A settlement valued at over $1 billion was approved in 2013 involving one of the primary defendants, Knauf Plasterboard Tianjin and hundreds of other defendants and insurance companies. Dan served on the trial team in Federal Court in Louisiana before the Honorable Eldon Fallon for each of the three Chinese Drywall bellwether cases.

He has also won a number of impressive jury and trial verdicts in building defect cases through the years involving windows and numerous other building products. Earlier in his career, Dan secured substantial sums for thousands of homeowners throughout the country who had a synthetic stucco on their homes called Exterior Insulation Finish System ("EIFS"), which caused water damage. On another occasion, he secured substantial sums for thousands of homeowners throughout Western Kentucky who had cracking concrete as a result of alkali carbonate reaction. Dan has also obtained numerous settlements or verdicts for homeowner associations for a wide variety of construction defects.

Dan is an 1983 graduate of the Universtity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and received his law degree, with honors, from Wake Forest University in 1988.

Whitney Tilson is the founder and Managing Partner of Kase Capital Management, which manages three value-oriented hedge funds.

Mr. Tilson is also the co-founder of Value Investor Insight, an investment newsletter, and the Value Investing Congress, a biannual investment conference.
Mr. Tilson has co-authored two books, The Art of Value Investing: How the World's Best Investors Beat the Market (2013) and More Mortgage Meltdown: 6 Ways to Profit in These Bad Times (2009), was one of the authors of Poor Charlie’s Almanack, the definitive book on Berkshire Hathaway Vice Chairman Charlie Munger, and has written for Forbes, the Financial Times, Kiplinger’s, the Motley Fool and TheStreet.com. He is a CNBC Contributor, was featured in a 60 Minutes segment in December 2008 about the housing crisis that won an Emmy, was one of five investors included in SmartMoney’s 2006 Power 30, was named by Institutional Investor in 2007 as one of 20 Rising Stars, has appeared dozens of times on CNBC, Bloomberg TV and Fox Business Network, was on the cover of the July 2007 Kiplinger’s, has been profiled by the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, and has spoken widely on value investing and behavioral finance. He served for two years on the Board of Directors of Cutter & Buck, which designs and markets upscale sportswear, until the company was sold in early 2007.

Prior to launching his investment career in 1999, Mr. Tilson spent five years working with Harvard Business School Professor Michael E. Porter studying the competitiveness of inner cities and inner-city-based companies nationwide. He and Professor Porter founded the Initiative for a Competitive Inner City, of which Mr. Tilson was Executive Director. Mr. Tilson also led the effort to create ICV Partners, a national for-profit private equity fund focused on minority-owned and inner-city businesses that has raised nearly $500 million. Before business school, Mr. Tilson was a founding member of Teach for America and then spent two years as a consultant at The Boston Consulting Group.

Mr. Tilson received an MBA with High Distinction from the Harvard Business School, where he was elected a Baker Scholar (top 5% of class), and graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College, with a bachelor’s degree in Government.

Mr. Tilson spent much of his childhood in Tanzania and Nicaragua (his parents are both educators, were among the first couples to meet and marry in the Peace Corps, and have retired in Kenya). Consequently, Mr. Tilson is involved with a number of charities focused on education reform and Africa. For his philanthropic work, he received the 2008 John C. Whitehead Social Enterprise Award from the Harvard Business School Club of Greater New York. He is a member and past Chairman of the Manhattan chapter of the Young Presidents’ Organization. Mr. Tilson lives in Manhattan with his wife and three daughters