JAMES P. McCARTHY received his Bachelor of Business Administration degree in Accounting from the University of Notre Dame in 1981 and his law degree from the John Marshall Law School in Chicago in 1984.

After admission to the Illinois bar in 1984, Mr. McCarthy practiced as a trial lawyer with various Chicago insurance defense firms concentrating in personal injury, insurance coverage, product liability, subrogation, and toxic tort litigation.

As a founding partner in Gunty & McCarthy, Mr. McCarthy concentrates his practice in complex litigation, including complex insurance coverage matters, toxic tort, chemical exposure, pharmaceutical and medical device litigation, product liability, railroad losses, trucking accidents and transportation losses, environmental, catastrophic personal injury defense, construction and construction defect litigation and commercial litigation.

Mr. McCarthy has extensive courtroom experience throughout Illinois and in many federal and state courts throughout the country. Mr. McCarthy is a member of the Illinois State Bar, the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, the United States District Court for the Southern District of Illinois, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit and several other federal bars, and has been admitted to numerous other jurisdictions pro hac vice.

Mr. McCarthy has been involved in several class action lawsuits, including the Factor VIII Hemophiliac litigation involving HIV tainted blood products and heart patient litigation involving defective pacemakers and pacing leads. This experience includes the In Re Cordis MDL which was pending in the federal district court in Ohio and in various other jurisdictions around the country and involved not only complex class action issues, but also complex insurance coverage issues.

Mr. McCarthy is a member of the Defense Research Institute, the Illinois Association of Defense Trial Counsel, the National Association of Railroad Trial Counsel (NARTC), the Western Loss Association and the Illinois Self-Insureds Association, the Blue Goose International, Chicago Pond (MLG 1998), the Chicago Bar Association, the Illinois State Bar Association and the DuPage County Bar Association. He is AV rated by Martindale-Hubbell and recently joined the prestigious Claims and Litigation Management Alliance.  The CLM is a nonpartisian alliance comprised of thousands of insurance companies, corporations, Corporate Counsel, Litigation and Risk Managers, claims professionals and attorneys.  Through education and collaboration the organization’s goals are to create a common interest in the representation by firms of companies, and to promote and further the highest standards of litigation management in pursuit of client defense.  Selected attorneys and law firms are extended membership by invitation only based on nominations from CLM Fellows.