Our Team
Robert Hirschhorn
Jury and Trial Consultation Expert
Robert Hirschhorn of Cathy E. Bennett & Associates,
Inc. is an attorney and nationally recognized expert in jury
and trial consultation. Since 1985, he has helped select
juries that have returned tens of billions of dollars in
verdicts across the country. His recent work includes
extraordinary results such as a $2.065 billion RoundUp verdict
in Georgia (2025), a $109.5 million verdict for a client
severely burned in a house explosion (2025), and a $60 million
award in the first Enfamil baby formula case (2024).
He has been featured on
CNN,
MSNBC,
News Nation, Court TV, HLN, Dateline NBC, 48 Hours, Nightline, and
national radio. He lectures across the country on the art and
science of jury selection.
Other notable outcomes include a $2.25 billion and a $175
million RoundUp verdict in Philadelphia (2024, 2023), an $860
million crane collapse case in Dallas (2023), a $440 million
wrongful death verdict for a child (2023), and a $110 million
award against 3M for two soldiers injured by defective
military earplugs (2023). Earlier landmark verdicts include a
$352 million award in Cruz v. Allied for a catastrophically
injured man (2021), a $525 million patent infringement verdict
in the Eastern District of Texas (2021), a $222 million
wrongful death verdict (2021), and a $115 million award
against the State of Washington (2020)
Robert was also part of the trial team that secured an $8
billion punitive damages verdict against Johnson & Johnson in
a Risperdal case (2019), selected the jury in the first opioid
litigation trial that settled for $260 million (2019), and
helped achieve $550 million in actual and $4.6 billion in
punitive damages for 22 plaintiffs in the Johnson & Johnson
talc powder litigation (2018).
In the criminal arena, Robert has consulted in several
nationally watched trials resulting in acquittals, including
State of Florida v. William Kennedy Smith (sexual assault),
State of Texas v. U.S. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (ethics
charges), State of Texas v. Robert Durst (murder), United
States v. Robert Kaluza (Deepwater Horizon explosion), and
United States v. Mark Forkner (Boeing 737 Max). A frequent
speaker and thought leader, Robert has authored four books and
numerous articles for Law360, Texas Lawyer, and AAJ.
Gaurav Tiwari
Product and Technology Executive
Gaurav Tiwari is a product and technology executive turned entrepreneur. In his last venture, he founded an E-commerce platform (The Waves) that merges inspiring content with proprietary AI technology to make discovering and shopping organically-farmed, honest wines from the world's most groundbreaking winemakers easier, and more personalized, than ever before.
Prior to founding The Waves Gaurav spent nearly a decade at the E-commerce tech giant Amazon, where he led teams responsible for category management, technology, data science, and product development. Before Amazon, Gaurav was a management consultant at Strategy& (formerly known as Booz & Company). Prior to that, he worked at Mars Inc., where he led operations management for the M&M's brand.
Gaurav holds a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from the Institute of Engineering and Technology, India, a Dual Masters in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research from The Pennsylvania State University and MBA from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Gaurav lives in Seattle with his family — three energetic kids and a sweet little pup.
Swarup Acharya
Product and Technology Innovator
Swarup Acharya is a product and technology innovator with 25-year leadership experience in E-commerce, Travel and Advertising industries. He started his career at Bell Labs, Alcatel-Lucent (now Nokia) where his advanced research on Telecom and Internet systems led to over 25 US and international patents.
Before launching VerdictHub, he was VP, Product, at Nordstrom leading teams responsible for the digital and store customer experience for Nordstrom and Nordstrom Rack brands. He helped introduce advanced analytics and AI technologies to enhance the customer shopping experience and drive significant conversion and revenue growth on their digital channels. Prior to that, he held senior roles at Comcast, Altice and Expedia.
Swarup has a Bachelor of Technology (Honors) degree in Computer Science from Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India, a Sc.M and Ph.D in Computer Science from Brown University and MBA from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Swarup lives in Summit, NJ with his wife and their two kids.