1997 Trial Lawyer of the Year Finalists Announced

Trial Lawyers for Public Justice (TLPJ) has named the attorneys who prosecuted ten outstanding cases as finalists for its 1997 Trial Lawyer of the Year Award. The nationally prestigious award is bestowed annually upon the trial lawyer or lawyers who have made the greatest contribution to the public interest by trying or settling a precedent-setting case.

"These attorneys exemplify how trial lawyers use their skills and determination to create a more just society," said TLPJ Foundation President William E. Snead of Albuquerque, New Mexico. "They serve as inspiring models for all of us."

The finalists were nominated for their committed work in cases addressing a broad range of social issues, including civil rights, environmental protection, human rights, and government and corporate accountability.

This year's finalists, in alphabetical order, are listed below:

Lawrence Baron of Portland, Oregon, took on a case that virtually no one else would have pursued, persuaded the Oregon state legislature to change the law so it could be brought, and then fought off over 150 motions by the defendant to win justice for his client in Kirkwood v. General Motors. Plaintiff Anne Kirkwood was horribly burned and disfigured when, through no fault of her own, her car collided with a 1976 General Motors (GM) pickup truck with side-saddle gas tanks. Her granddaughter burned to death, and her grandson suffered serious burns in the crash. But Oregon's statute of repose -- which banned any lawsuit against a manufacturer whose product was more than eight years old -- simply precluded any suit. Baron took the case anyway and launched an effort to have the law changed -- even though the Oregon state legislature was in the midst of passing "tort reform" measures. GM hired eight lobbyists to fight the effort, but Baron hired a lobbyist, effectively "tried" the case to the legislature, and prevailed. He then engaged in a knock-down, drag-out litigation battle with GM. Finally, on the eve of trial, GM agreed to settle the case on terms that are confidential, but that plainly make sure that all of Ms. Kirkwood's needs have been cared for. Baron's legislative and legal victories paved the way for other suits based on injuries sustained from exploding side-saddle gas tanks and also prompted the introduction of a bill to revise Oregon's statute of repose into a statute of useful life.

Daniel C. Cathcart of Los Angeles' Magana, Cathcart & McCarthy won a $22 billion dollar judgment in Roxas v. Marcos against Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos for torturing and stealing from an amateur treasure hunter. In 1971, Roger Roxas found a tunnel in the Philippines filled with Japanese treasure that was hidden after World War II. He took some gold and the Golden Buddha (a metric ton of solid gold and diamonds) to his home. Ferdinand Marcos found out about the discovery, stole the Buddha, and threw Roxas in prison, where he was beaten and tortured for two years. Fearing for his life, Roxas then assigned all of his interest in the claim to The Golden Buddha Corporation. Cathcart worked on this case for ten years, tracking down the few people who would testify that the Golden Buddha even existed. He endured phone taps, office break-ins, and advanced over $1 million in costs. He had to rely almost exclusively on videotaped depositions because witnesses were afraid to appear in person. On the trial date, Roxas mysteriously died. Three years later, a jury awarded $6 million to Roxas' estate and over $22 billion to The Golden Buddha Corporation. Cathcart is now attempting to collect on the judgment and has already obtained a $450 million attachment on a Marcos bank account in Switzerland.

Paul R. Cox of Burns, Bryant, Hinchey, Cox & Rockefeller in Dover, New Hampshire, fought for 15 years to win the first-ever judgment against the United States for a negligent Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) inspection in Irving v. United States. The case alleged that Cox's client, a factory worker, sustained severe injuries when her hair was caught in machinery that lacked proper guards -- a serious OSHA violation that had been missed in two previous inspections. The suit, filed under the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA), was dismissed twice by the district court, which ruled that OSHA was immune from suit under the FTCA's "discretionary function" exception. Following the two dismissals and subsequent reversals, the judge finally considered the merits of the suit and ruled in favor of the government. The appellate court reversed the decision yet again and granted plaintiffs' request to have the case retried before a different judge. This time, Cox prevailed and won a million dollar judgment for his client. Cox's tenacious pursuit of justice from the federal government still continues. The case is now on appeal for the fourth time, as the government is challenging the judgment against it.

James Ferraro of Miami's Ferraro & Associates proved that a pregnant woman's exposure to the fungicide Benlate caused her child to be born without eyes -- and held DuPont accountable in Castillo v. E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Company and Pine Island Farms. It is the first case ever successfully prosecuted against a chemical company for causing a birth defect. Ferraro endured three years of discovery, which included taking 63 depositions in four countries, reviewing tens of thousands of documents, and battling over 60 pretrial motions. Ferraro also had the onerous task of ruling out all other potential causes for the birth defect. In addition, the trial included hearings on highly technical scientific issues that involved rat and human studies on the potential effects of Benlate exposure. After a six-week trial, the jury returned a $4 million verdict against DuPont. The successful outcome on behalf of the plaintiff has opened the courthouse doors to many children born without eyes because of DuPont's wrongful conduct. Ferraro currently represents approximately 50 other children in similar situations.

Michael D. Hausfeld and Cyrus Mehri of Cohen, Milstein, Hausfeld & Toll in Washington, D.C., and Max W. Berger, Daniel L. Berger, and Steven B. Singer of Bernstein, Litowitz, Berger & Grossmann in New York won the largest settlement in the history of employment race discrimination in the widely publicized case, Roberts v. Texaco, Inc. The class action was filed on behalf of approximately 1,400 African-Americans employed by Texaco, alleging race discrimination in violation of federal and state laws. It focused on breaking through Texaco's "glass ceiling," which had long thwarted the career development of African-Americans. After three years of litigation and the surfacing of the now famous "Texaco Tapes" -- which revealed both racist attitudes and a high-level corporate conspiracy to destroy and hide evidence -- these attorneys won monetary and programmatic relief worth over $172 million for the class. The settlement included a payment of $115 million to class members, a special salary increase of 11.34 percent for each class member, and the creation of an independent Equality and Tolerance Task Force to alter Texaco's human resources programs and monitor their progress. The overall settlement sent a "wake-up call" to Corporate America for the need to achieve equal opportunity in the workplace.

Walter J. Lack, Gary A. Praglin, and Jill P. McDonnell of Engstrom, Lipscomb & Lack in Los Angeles, Thomas V. Girardi and Robert W. Finnerty of Girardi & Keese in Los Angeles, and Edward Masry of Masry & Vititoe in Toluca Lake, California, held the world's largest publicly owned utility accountable for poisoning a town's groundwater and won a stunning global settlement in Anderson v. Pacific Gas & Electric Co. The landmark toxic tort case was filed on behalf of 648 residents of Hinkley, California, who had been unwittingly drinking, bathing in, and inhaling carcinogens for years. Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) had been poisoning the groundwater in the rural town with chromium, a highly toxic carcinogen, since 1956. The plaintiffs' injuries ranged from serious digestive disorders to various cancers and respiratory disorders. These dedicated attorneys reviewed over one million documents and took several hundred depositions during discovery. During the trial, which lasted almost two years, they had to overcome the difficulties of proving medical causation in a toxic tort setting, deal with the destruction and nonexistence of evidence of decades of exposure, reconstruct a complex hydro-geological water system, and prove the severity of PG&E's unethical conduct. The result was a stunning settlement requiring PG&E to compensate its victims with $333 million, clean up the environment, and stop using chromium. This case has prompted other utilities to take similar actions and has resulted in environmental remediation at other contaminated sites.

Aaron Simon of Kazan, McClain, Edises, Simon & Abrams in Oakland, California, fought for fourteen years to successfully overcome a California workers' compensation provision that bars employees from suing their employers in a civil suit, and finally won justice for ten personal injury and wrongful death victims in Rosario v. Diamond Shamrock Corp. The case involved workers at an oil and chemical conglomerate who contracted lung cancer from exposure to bis-chlorometheryl ether, a deadly carcinogen. After ten years of discovery, a 16-week trial of the first personal injury case, and an outlay of almost $1 million in case costs, the plaintiffs prevailed due in large part to Simon's innovative theories of liability. He creatively and successfully argued that the claim satisfied two legal exceptions to the workers' compensation bar -- one for aggravating an employee's injury and one for negligently managing a separate operating unit of the company. The jury returned a $4.6 million verdict for one of the victims, but the company appealed, and the appellate court ordered a new trial on damages only. On the eve of the second personal injury trial, 14 years after the first filing, Diamond Shamrock settled all ten cases for a confidential multi-million dollar amount. This case sends a strong message to companies that they must prevent injury to their workers, particularly when the potential injuries are clearly known and life threatening. This case has also made it easier for California workers to file civil suits against their employers.

Robert A. Swift of Philadelphia's Kohn, Swift & Graf, and Sherry P. Broder of Honolulu, won a nearly $2 billion judgment in the Ferdinand E. Marcos Human Rights Litigation on behalf of almost 10,000 Filipinos who were tortured, summarily executed or disappeared during the Marcos martial law years. The case is the first class action in the human rights field and the first human rights case in the United States successfully litigated on the merits. Finalists for the Trial Lawyer of the Year Award in 1994 for their work on the liability and punitive damages portions of the case, and in 1996 for the compensatory damages phase, these lawyers have been nominated a third time for their continuing success. In a fight that has lasted over a decade, Swift and Broder made new law and won the largest award ever in a personal injury action. As part of their collection efforts, they also obtained $1 million for the class after doggedly pursuing ownership to a house in Hawaii where Marcos lived in the late 1980s. In Swift and Broder's latest victories, the court upheld the nearly $2 billion judgment, as well as a contempt citation against Marcos' heirs for failing to appear for depositions and for violating an injunction prohibiting disposition of estate assets. The time for appeal has run and the judgment is now final. Counsel are tenaciously continuing their collection efforts.

Nathalie M. Walker of the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund in New Orleans and Diane Curran of Harmon, Curran & Spielberg in Washington, D.C., convinced the licensing board of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) that race played a determining role in the site selection process for a new uranium enrichment plant between two rural towns in predominantly African-American communities. The decision in In the Matter of Louisiana Energy Services, L.P. was the first decision by any U.S. governmental agency or court turning on the issue of environmental racism. The proposed plant would have turned the communities in question into a de facto toxic waste dump -- jeopardizing the residents' subsistence fishing, hunting, and gardening -- by producing and storing more than 100,000 tons of radioactive waste on site. Representing a citizens' group in a legal battle that lasted over seven years, these attorneys left the proposed project dead in its tracks. They convinced the NRC licensing panel that the plant was not needed, that the financing for the entire operation was dubious, that there was insufficient proof of funds available to clean up the site after the plant ceased operation, and that there was evidence of environmental racism. Through their efforts, Walker and Curran scored an important triumph for environmental protection, as well as civil and human rights. No other citizens' group in the history of NRC proceedings has ever won an outright denial of a proposed license.

Reed Zars, a solo practitioner from Laramie, Wyoming, working pro bono with a mere $5,000 allocated for costs, obtained a precedent-setting decision under the Clean Air Act and a stunning settlement against three of the West's largest utility companies in Sierra Club v. Public Service Company of Colorado. Zars filed a citizen suit against a coal-fired power plant for polluting nearby air and lakes, and convinced the court to consider as evidence the records from the utilities' own emission monitors in the plant's smoke stacks. Prior to Zars' case, only evidence obtained by individual inspectors was accepted by the courts to prove violations. Issuing the first ruling to permit citizens to use this valuable monitor evidence, the court found over 17,000 violations of the Clean Air Act. After three years of litigation and six months of negotiation, Zars achieved a comprehensive settlement. The companies agreed to install $130 million in pollution control equipment at the plant, pay $2 million in civil penalties, another $2 million for conservation easement purchases, and $250,000 for wood and coal stove conversions. The new pollution controls will prevent the emission of 20,000 tons of air pollution each year.