Leslie A. Brueckner

The Space Around the Propeller

Jeanne Sprietsma fell from a boat and was killed by an unguarded propeller. The Coast Guard had declined to require guards on every recreational motor. Leslie Brueckner persuaded a unanimous Supreme Court that federal silence had not erased the family’s state-law remedy.

A federal statute can set a floor, occupy a field, assign authority to an agency, preserve state remedies, or displace them. That choice determines whether a family reaches a jury, whether a patient can identify the company responsible for a warning, whether a consumer class can be heard, and whether an investigation can be published.

Brueckner’s appeals begin with a specific person, purchase, policy, parcel, or product and ask what federal law requires, what it preserves, and which remedies remain available.

A Turn on an Inland Lake

On July 10, 1995, Jeanne Sprietsma was riding in an eighteen-foot ski boat on an inland lake crossing the Kentucky–Tennessee border. When the boat turned, she fell overboard. The blades of a 115-horsepower Mercury Marine outboard motor struck her and killed her. The motor had no propeller guard.

Her husband, Rex, brought an Illinois product-liability action alleging that the unguarded motor was unreasonably dangerous. The Illinois Supreme Court treated the Coast Guard’s 1990 decision not to impose a universal propeller-guard regulation as a federal policy that displaced the common-law suit.

Brueckner argued in the United States Supreme Court that the agency had made a narrower decision. After an eighteen-month study, the Coast Guard concluded that the available data supported neither one nationwide rule nor a single guard suitable for every boat and motor. The agency’s decision addressed the limits of regulatory evidence while leaving both product safety and a jury’s evaluation of a guard designed for a particular engine open.

On December 3, 2002, a unanimous Court reversed. The Federal Boat Safety Act expressly preserved common-law liability. Its preemption clause addressed state enactments, not private damages actions. The Coast Guard’s choice not to regulate left propeller-guard law where it had been before the inquiry.

The Supreme Court allowed the Sprietsmas to return to state court without deciding Mercury Marine’s liability. Its immediate consequence was access: the family could return to state court and seek recovery under the law Congress had chosen to save.

The Label Every Generic Had to Copy

T.H. and C.H. were exposed in utero to generic terbutaline after their mother received the drug to suppress premature labor. Their complaint alleged that the drug affected fetal brain development and that its warning label did not adequately describe the risk. They were diagnosed with developmental delays at age three and autism by age five.

Federal law divided authority over the warning. A generic manufacturer had a duty of sameness: its label had to match the brand-name label. The brand-name application holder could strengthen a warning without awaiting advance approval from the Food and Drug Administration. Novartis had controlled the label for brand-name Brethine until 2001, six years before the mother received the generic product.

Brueckner led the appeal after the trial court sustained Novartis’s demurrer. In 2017, the California Supreme Court held that the twins could plead negligence and negligent misrepresentation against the company that had controlled language every generic producer was required to copy. The duty could extend to patients foreseeably dispensed the generic equivalent and did not necessarily end the moment the brand was transferred if the earlier label remained in circulation.

The ruling identified the entity with unilateral power over the warning. It returned the claims for factual development on reliance, causation, and liability rather than allowing the generic-label system to leave no responsible speaker.

The Organic Premium

Herb Thyme Farms operated a small certified-organic farm and several larger conventional farms. Michelle Quesada alleged that workers mixed herbs from both operations in the same packing facility and sold conventionally grown product under a 100-percent-organic label at an organic premium.

The company argued that the federal Organic Foods Production Act displaced California consumer claims. Brueckner represented Quesada before the California Supreme Court. In 2015, the court unanimously reversed judgment on the pleadings.

Congress had created national certification standards and prevented states from imposing conflicting organic-production rules. It had not insulated intentional misuse of the federal label from ordinary fraud, unfair-competition, and false-advertising remedies. The national standard supplied the promise. State law could address an allegation that the contents did not keep it.

The decision reopened the action without deciding whether the mixing occurred or whether a class would ultimately prevail. It preserved a consumer remedy that reinforced, rather than displaced, the federal definition of organic.

Twenty Thousand Pools and One Class Definition

James Noel bought an inflatable Ready Set Pool from a Rite Aid store after seeing packaging that appeared to show several adults fitting comfortably inside. His complaint alleged that the image overstated the pool’s usable size. Discovery identified 20,752 California sales, 2,479 returns, and $949,279.34 in revenue.

The trial court denied class certification because Noel had not supplied evidence showing exactly how every purchaser could later be identified and notified. The Court of Appeal affirmed. By the time the case reached the California Supreme Court, Noel had died and his widow, Diana Nieves Noel, had been substituted.

Brueckner argued the appeal. In July 2019, the court unanimously reversed. An ascertainable class is one defined by objective characteristics and common transactional facts that make eventual identification possible. California law did not add a separate administrative-feasibility requirement demanding a completed customer-identification mechanism at certification.

The ruling did not certify the class or decide whether the packaging misled consumers. It removed a threshold capable of ending modest-value claims before a court considered predominance, superiority, notice, or the merits. A class definition had to explain who belonged; it did not have to arrive with every purchaser’s name already attached.

Half an Eye Drop on the Cheek

Patients using prescription eye drops for glaucoma and other serious conditions alleged that the bottles dispensed far more liquid than the human eye could hold. The excess ran down the cheek or into the tear duct. The medication offered no added benefit once it overflowed, yet patients paid for every drop and replaced the bottle sooner.

The complaint in Cottrell v. Alcon Laboratories drew on decades of research indicating that an adult eye holds roughly seven to ten microliters. The medicines at issue allegedly emitted drops two or three times larger than the recommended maximum. One pricing example calculated that oversized drops could cost a patient more than $1,100 in unnecessary medication each year.

The district court held that the consumers’ financial injury was too speculative for Article III standing. Public Justice led the Third Circuit appeal, with Leah Nicholls as the responsible attorney and Brueckner serving as cooperating counsel.

In October 2017, the Third Circuit reversed. The consumers alleged a concrete interest in money spent on medicine that the bottle made impossible to use. Standing did not require them to prove the entire consumer case before discovery. The court sent the claims back for further proceedings and held that the plaintiffs’ economic injury was sufficient to support a lawsuit.

The Lens and the Missing Safety Reports

Marjorie Glover underwent cataract surgery in 2014 and received a Trulign Lens in each eye. Within weeks, she experienced severe loss of visual acuity, blurriness, halos, hazing, and pain. Doctors diagnosed Z Syndrome. Multiple procedures failed to restore her vision, and fragments of the lenses remained in both eyes.

Glover alleged that Bausch & Lomb knew of adverse events associated with the lens, did not report them to the FDA in a timely manner, and delayed a postapproval safety study. She maintained that complete reporting would have changed the information available to her surgeon before implantation.

The federal appeal turned on a narrow corridor between express and implied preemption. State law could not impose a device requirement different from federal law, but a claim also could not exist solely as private enforcement of the federal statute. The Second Circuit certified the underlying state-law questions to Connecticut’s highest court. Brueckner joined the plaintiffs’ briefing team.

In June 2022, the Connecticut Supreme Court held that the Connecticut Product Liability Act recognizes a negligence or failure-to-warn claim based on a manufacturer’s alleged failure to report adverse events and comply with postapproval requirements. The duty ran through the regulator because the regulator was positioned to change warnings and communicate risk to physicians.

The federal court later allowed the core reporting and postapproval theories to proceed. The sequence transformed a regulatory file into a route for explaining how safety information reaches the surgeon standing between a device and a patient’s eyesight.

The Investigation the First Amendment Protected

Brueckner founded Public Justice’s Food Project to use litigation against deceptive labeling and industrial practices affecting consumers, workers, farmers, animals, and environmental health. One of its broadest constitutional matters challenged North Carolina’s Property Protection Act.

The statute authorized substantial civil damages against employees and investigators who entered nonpublic workplace areas and recorded, photographed, or removed information in ways deemed outside their authority. PETA and a coalition of food-safety, animal-welfare, worker-accountability, and public-interest organizations maintained that the law threatened undercover investigations intended for publication.

Brueckner helped launch the challenge and served as cooperating counsel; Public Justice’s David Muraskin argued the Fourth Circuit appeal. In February 2023, the court enjoined North Carolina from applying the Act to PETA’s protected newsgathering activities.

The court did not erase every possible application of the statute. It severed other uses for later case-by-case review. The holding was exact: North Carolina could not use the Act to punish the coalition’s proposed undercover recording and publication of matters of public concern. The Supreme Court declined review that October, leaving the protection in place.

Twenty-Five Years of Roundup

Edwin Hardeman used Roundup from the 1980s through 2012 and developed non-Hodgkin lymphoma. His was the first bellwether tried in the federal Roundup multidistrict litigation. Brueckner joined Hardeman’s appellate team.

The final judgment included $5.27 million in compensatory damages and $20 million in punitive damages. In 2021, the Ninth Circuit upheld the causation evidence and liability findings, rejected preemption under the rule governing the appeal, and affirmed the judgment. The Supreme Court denied review in June 2022.

Two Thousand Six Hundred Wells

West Virginia landowners alleged that current and former operators had left nonproducing oil and gas wells unplugged on their property. The case concerned thousands of wells transferred in transactions worth roughly $642 million and plugging obligations estimated in the billions.

The defendants argued that the state environmental agency was indispensable and that its sovereign immunity required dismissal. The district court disagreed. The defendants then sought immediate appellate review before final judgment.

Brueckner argued for the landowners in the Fourth Circuit in May 2024. The court dismissed the appeal that August. The district court had ruled on required-party doctrine, not the agency’s immunity, and the order did not qualify for the narrow collateral-order exception. The landowners’ case continued in the trial court.

The broader landowner team then reached a settlement that received final approval in May 2025. Diversified Energy agreed to plug 2,600 wells across West Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Virginia, and Tennessee through 2034—more than four times the 580 wells covered by earlier agency schedules. The defendants also agreed to fund up to $6.5 million for notice, administration, service awards, fees, and costs, with a process for landowners to identify urgent health, safety, or environmental concerns.

An Appellate Career in Public-Interest Law

Brueckner graduated summa cum laude from the University of California, Berkeley in 1983 and earned her law degree magna cum laude from Harvard in 1987.

She spent nearly three decades at Public Justice and later helped lead a national Appellate and Supreme Court Practice Group. Her work has crossed constitutional law, consumer protection, antitrust, bankruptcy, class actions, environmental litigation, food systems, medical products, and mass torts.

Brueckner has taught appellate advocacy at Georgetown University Law Center and American University Washington College of Law.

Brueckner joined Singleton Schreiber as a partner in September 2024. The move placed her appellate practice inside a firm handling mass torts, environmental harm, product liability, consumer claims, and public-interest litigation nationwide.