Professor

Nicholas

J.

Wittner

Professor Nicholas Wittner served for 20 years as an assistant general counsel for the Nissan North America Legal Department. He headed the Legal Department's Product Group, which is responsible for the management of product liability litigation, product-related class actions, safety and environmental regulatory compliance matters, and patent litigation. He also advised engineers in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Europe, and Japan on safety compliance, as well as product safety and liability prevention.

Before his work at Nissan, Professor Wittner was an executive attorney at General Motors for 11 years, where he managed complex nationwide product liability litigation.

His professional activities have included leadership positions with the ABA Section of Litigation, including co-chair of the ABA's Products Liability Committee. He is a Life member of the American Law Institute. Professor Wittner served on the Members Consultative Group for and was deeply involved in many ALI projects, notably ALI's Restatement Third on Products Liability. Professor Wittner has been a frequent speaker at ABA and other professional association conferences and authored numerous professional publications.

Prof. Wittner has chaired, served as a keynote speaker, and moderated programs on automated vehicles and other advanced automated technologies, most recently at the Autonomous Vehicle Safety Regulation World Congress. He is one of the nation’s leading experts on legal issues involving these and related technologies. 

In addition, he has taught Product Liability Law and Practice; Advanced Product Liability (seminar course); Advanced Civil Procedure; International Civil Litigation; and in the Law College's prior LL.M program, Civil Litigation for Foreign-Educated Lawyers (at Michigan State and at overseas campus and affiliated universities).  He also has served as Acting Chief Compliance Officer in the Office of the President, Michigan State University.