Sylvie Gallage-Alwis is one of the founding partners of the Paris office of Signature Litigation which is a specialized firm focused on litigation and arbitration.
Signature Litigation has offices in Paris, London, Frankfurt and Gibraltar. It is the only European firm specialised in dispute resolution only.
Both an Avocat à la Cour and a Solicitor in England & Wales, Sylvie heads the firm's product liability / industrial risk practice.
For the past 18 years, Sylvie specialised in all cutting-edge complex disputes faced by manufacturers in France and the EU : product liability, product safety, toxic tort, mass litigation/class action, regulatory compliance, and environment / ESG. She is involved in several very high-profile French industrial disaster pending cases.
Sylvie also assists the manufacturers she works for in commercial litigation (e.g. sudden termination, unfair competition, significant imbalance cases) and contract / Terms & conditions review.
She represents a variety of globally recognised manufacturers from industries such as automotive, electronic products, life sciences, cosmetics, new technologies, steel, energy, food, toys, consumer goods etc. In this scope, she has developed strong regulatory knowledge, putting together innovative defences.
She is working on very technical legal issues such as the dieselgate, the generalisation of the "anxiety damage", the alleged planned obsolescence, the liability of marketplaces and their legal status, class actions and climate justice claims – always representing the manufacturer.
Her cases are against consumers, NGOs and also the French and European regulators. She has experience dealing with notably the DGCCRF, ANFR, ANSM, French customs, SSMVM, DREAL, Labor Inspection.
Sylvie is further known in the French market as a leading toxic tort / mass litigation lawyer. As such, she has been involved in most pro-company case law rendered in recent years, notably in asbestos-related cases (handling a docket of more than 8,000 individual claims), with some cases mentioned in the French Civil and Social Security Codes because of the significant reversal in case law they represent. She is now logically involved in issues relating to PFAS, France being the first EU Member State enacting legislation banning or limiting PFAS per industry.
What interests her in the defense of manufacturers? The fact that this practice is very diverse on many aspects: (1) the claimants who can sue her clients (consumers, NGOs, the regulators, competitors), (2) the courts she must appear before (civil, administrative, labour, commercial, social security, criminal courts) and (3) the complexification and multiplication of regulations which make lawyers' advice key before, during and after the manufacturing of any product.
Her experience shows that claimants and regulators are increasingly sophisticated and organized at EU and even worldwide level when they decide to file a claim. This is why she has developed a network of highly specialised product liability and safety lawyers around the world to assist in large-scale matters.
Sylvie is highly recognised for her skills as a litigator by directories. In The Legal 500 EMEA, France chapter, Sylvie is recognised as one of the only two Lawyers for product liability under Dispute Resolution: Commercial Litigation and is described as "the North Star in Product Liability". She is further described by Lexology Index as "a star in the international world" and "well-connected expert".
She won several awards such as the "Best in Product Liability" award at the 2019 LMG Euromoney Europe Women in Business Law Awards and the Lexology Client Choice award in Product Liability since 2021, each year.
Sylvie is one of the Directors of the Board of the International Association of Defense Counsel (IADC) and the only European Board member. She also regularly speaks at meetings of the International Consumer Product Health and Safety Organization (ICPHSO).
