Food + Healthy Living
Businesses focused on food, restaurants, dietary supplements and healthy living come to Goodwin for leading expertise and a holistic suite of services. The Goodwin team assists with product labeling and advertising issues, trademark and patent issues, regulatory matters and agency investigations, and private equity and transactional advice. Our litigation work includes defending Federal Trade Commission (FTC) advertising complaints, enforcement actions and prosecutions, IP matters, consumer class actions and products liability matters, as well as counseling on risk management and litigation avoidance.
Our lawyers also work with private equity firms that focus on restaurants, dietary supplement marketers, specialty food manufacturers and other food businesses. We advise them on food industry issues and help them develop both investment and exit strategies. The ongoing convergence of capital and innovation requires advisors who are equally fluent in both worlds. Goodwin’s unique combination of deep experience in a rapidly-changing, technology-driven economy sets us apart.
Food and nutritional businesses also rely on us for corporate transactions, many of which involve vendor agreements, product line sales or acquisitions, reorganizations or financial restructuring, as well as intellectual property and employment issues.
We counsel clients on everything from nutritional supplements, food additives, functional foods and dietary supplements to herbs, natural/organic foods, and food packaging. As the science of food technology evolves, we’re working in emerging areas such as functional foods, nutraceuticals, antimicrobial “smart” packaging, genetic engineering and nanotechnology. Clients include manufacturers, marketers, wholesalers, retail companies, restaurants, and industry organizations.

Contacts
Private Equity
In the face of a competitive marketplace, elite private equity firms expect counsel with extensive experience and a stable of blue chip relationships. That’s why private equity firms have been entrusting their deals to Goodwin for decades. We believe our position to be unique within BigLaw given the collaboration of our private equity team with our robust life sciences, technology and healthcare practices. With our largest and strongest practices working together, Goodwin is exceptionally suited to address whatever the future brings.
Our Private Equity team ranks as one of the top in the United States, and we are on a trajectory of rapid ascent, both in the U.S. and abroad. The group is a market leader in the expansive middle market sector, having earned a reputation for notable buyouts, growth equity deals and growth company representations in key sectors such as technology, healthcare, financial and business services, consumer and manufacturing. And with the breakneck pace of technology disrupting industries around the world, we are uniquely positioned to partner with our clients and embrace the promise and potential of innovation.
Products Litigation and Counseling
Proposition 65 + Food Labeling Litigation
Over the past 25 years, Proposition 65 litigation has become a real threat to businesses providing goods and services in California. The potential costs faced by corporate defendants are high – massive civil penalties, mandatory warnings on their products and damage to a company’s brand. Many law firms can process Proposition 65 cases; very few can try them and win. Goodwin has quickly become preeminent among those few firms.
In the face of a competitive marketplace, elite private equity firms expect counsel with extensive experience and a stable of blue chip relationships. That’s why private equity firms have been entrusting their deals to Goodwin for decades. We believe our position to be unique within BigLaw given the collaboration of our private equity team with our robust life sciences, technology and healthcare practices. With our largest and strongest practices working together, Goodwin is exceptionally suited to address whatever the future brings.
Our Private Equity team ranks as one of the top in the United States, and we are on a trajectory of rapid ascent, both in the U.S. and abroad. The group is a market leader in the expansive middle market sector, having earned a reputation for notable buyouts, growth equity deals and growth company representations in key sectors such as technology, healthcare, financial and business services, consumer and manufacturing. And with the breakneck pace of technology disrupting industries around the world, we are uniquely positioned to partner with our clients and embrace the promise and potential of innovation.
Over the past 25 years, Proposition 65 litigation has become a real threat to businesses providing goods and services in California. The potential costs faced by corporate defendants are high – massive civil penalties, mandatory warnings on their products and damage to a company’s brand. Many law firms can process Proposition 65 cases; very few can try them and win. Goodwin has quickly become preeminent among those few firms.