Profile
Daniel L. Stanner is a Partner at Tabet DiVito & Rothstein. For nearly 30 years, Mr. Stanner has represented a wide range of clients in product liability defense, transportation litigation, construction litigation, professional malpractice and commercial litigation.
Mr. Stanner has represented plaintiffs and defendants in hundreds of personal injury and wrongful death actions. He has defended product manufacturers from claims involving forklifts, aircraft, firearms and combines, among others. As part of that practice, he currently represents a Fortune 200 company on more than 30 product liability claims consolidated in Illinois arising from the use of cooking sprays. He has also handled claims involving allegedly defective candles sold nationally and represented a manufacturer of Chinese drywall in a massive multidistrict litigation.
Representative Experience
Mr. Stanner is currently lead counsel for one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical distributors on more than 40 cases throughout Illinois relating to opioid supply practices.
As part of his transportation practice, Mr. Stanner represented some of the world’s largest intermodal carriers on personal injury and property damage claims stemming from alleged equipment defects. That litigation involves the vigorous defense of the underlying actions as well as contractual indemnity disputes arising from those cases.
Notable construction litigation experience includes the successful defense of an architect and a structural engineer in wrongful death and personal injury actions stemming from the collapse of a suspended scaffold at the John Hancock Building in Chicago. Mr. Stanner also obtained summary judgment for a general contractor on a claim brought by a concrete carpenter who fell five stories down an elevator shaft and sustained serious personal injuries.
Mr. Stanner also has special experience in complex commercial litigation on many issues including breach of contract, fraud, self-dealing, shareholder oppression and misappropriation of corporate assets. He made important new law regarding the duty to cooperate imposed by indemnity contracts governed by Illinois law. The ruling came in a multi-million dollar environmental indemnity dispute in which the indemnitee attempted to withhold privileged documents despite the duty to cooperate. Mr. Stanner has also successfully pursued many declaratory judgment actions to obtain insurance coverage for his clients.
Education, Professional Activities, and Recognition
Mr. Stanner has contributed to legal and professional journals. His writing has addressed a wide range of topics, including shareholder oppression cases under the Illinois Business Corporations Act and standard contract provisions protecting design professionals. He recently co-authored “Removing Judicial Blinders: Beyond the Underlying Complaint in Insurance Coverage Disputes in Construction Site Personal Injury Cases“, in The Policy: The Newsletter of the Illinois State Bar Association’s Section on Insurance Law (Jan. 2013, Vol. 57, No. 3), at p. 1, with John M. Fitzgerald and Brent M. Ryan. He is also a graduate of the International Association of Defense Counsel Trial Academy and has served as a judge in the John Marshall Law School Trial Practice Program.
Mr. Stanner also worked with the Chicago Bar Association’s Judicial Evaluation Committee where he has served as both an investigator and a committee member. He was also elected by his peers to become a member of the Illinois Society of Trial Lawyers, an esteemed group of attorneys from both the plaintiff and defense bars in Illinois.
Mr. Stanner graduated cum laude from Loyola University of Chicago School of Law in 1992. He received his Bachelor of Arts Degree, cum laude, from Boston College in 1989.
Before entering private practice, He served as a judicial extern for the Honorable Marvin Aspen in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.
Mr. Stanner is admitted to practice in Illinois and before the Illinois Supreme Court, the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, and the United States District Court for the District of Colorado.