For Immediate Release: June 15, 1999

For More Information Contact: TLPJ, 202-797-8600

1999 Trial Lawyer of the Year Finalists Announced

Trial Lawyers for Public Justice (TLPJ) has named the attorneys who worked on nine outstanding cases as finalists for its 1999 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. The winner will be announced July 20 at The TLPJ Foundation's Annual Party in San Francisco.

"These attorneys exemplify how trial lawyers use their skills and determination to create a more just society," said TLPJ Foundation President Joseph A. Power Jr. of Chicago's Power, Rogers & Smith. "They serve as inspiring models for us all."

The finalists were nominated for their committed work in cases addressing a broad range of social issues, including civil rights, environmental protection, consumer rights and human rights. This year's finalists are listed alphabetically below.

Elisa Barnes of New York and Denise Dunleavy of Weitz & Luxenberg in New York achieved a precedent-setting victory in Hamilton v. Accu-Tek, when a jury held gun manufacturers liable on a novel theory of market share liability for negligently distributing handguns in the New York area.

Barnes brought the case in 1995 on behalf of seven victims of gun violence and their families against 25 gun manufacturers. Barnes alleged that the manufacturers were liable for the injuries and deaths because they had negligently and excessively distributed handguns.

Barnes litigated the case by herself for four years and survived three summary judgment motions and the collective battle tactics of all 25 firearms manufacturers. At trial, the jury found 15 of the 25 manufacturer defendants negligent in the marketing and distribution of their products, and eight of the manufacturers responsible for three deaths as a result of their negligent marketing. The jury awarded damages to one plaintiff, Steven Fox, who survived a gunshot wound to the head. The legal precedent set by the judge's decision on the negligent distribution theory, along with the jury's verdict, helped form the basis for lawsuits filed by municipalities around the country against the firearms industry.

Fred Baron, Lisa Blue, Mike Kaeske, and Kay Reeves of Baron and Budd in Dallas, Texas, obtained a $36.7 million verdict in Hall v. Babcock & Wilcox Co. for eight residents of Apollo, Pennsylvania, who contracted cancer as a result of their exposure to radiation from a nearby plant that produced enriched, bomb-grade uranium. They sued Babcock & Wilcox and Atlantic Richfield Company on behalf of 119 Apollo residents who lived in the shadow of the plant's stacks, which for years had spewed smoke laced with highly radioactive particles. The verdict on behalf of the first eight plaintiffs has been hailed as the highest ever in a radiation exposure case.

Over a four-year period, the litigation team conducted 175 depositions, obtained over 3 million pages of documents in discovery, and spent over $2 million. The case was tried under the Price-Anderson Act, so the attorneys had to prove that the defendants violated specific federal regulations and that those violations caused the plaintiffs' cancers. The jury finding that the defendants were negligent was a tremendous victory for the plaintiffs, who had sought information about the plant's dangers for over 15 years, but met only resistance and stonewalling.

In addition to the verdict (and a separate settlement of punitive damages), Baron, Blue, Kaeske, and Reeves achieved a heightened public awareness of the hazards of nuclear materials and a recognition that a group of residents from a rural town can prevail in the face of corporate abuses and governmental secrecy.

Michael J. Bidart of Shernoff, Bidart, Darras & Dillon in Claremont, California, obtained the highest verdict ever in Goodrich v. Aetna U.S. Healthcare of California, Inc., a wrongful death case against a Health Maintenance Organization (HMO) on behalf of a cancer victim's spouse.

David Goodrich was suffering from terminal cancer. After Aetna delayed authorization of critical medical care recommended by its own doctors for months, Goodrich obtained medical care on his own, but died shortly thereafter. Although Aetna did not cause Goodrich's death due to medical malpractice, the HMO's conduct dramatically shortened his life span and diminished the quality of his life.
Bidart tried the case alone against Aetna's team of corporate and outside lawyers, survived the HMO's attempt to force Goodrich's claims into arbitration, produced 2,000 pages of written discovery responses, and attended 76 depositions over the 3-1/2 years of litigation. He responded to 56 motions in limine before battling Aetna in a 2-1/2 month long trial. The jury awarded damages to Goodrich's widow for her husband's unpaid medical bills and nearly $3.4 million for loss of consortium and companionship on the wrongful death cause of action. Further finding that Aetna acted with fraud, malice, and oppression, the jury awarded an additional $116 million in punitive damages. This case sets an important precedent for the corporate accountability of HMOs that fail to cover appropriate medical treatments.

Madelyn J. Chaber of Wartnick, Chaber, Harowitz, Smith & Tigerman in San Francisco scored a record $51.5 million verdict against tobacco giant Philip Morris on behalf of a 52-year old woman with inoperable lung cancer caused by the Marlboro cigarettes she smoked for 35 years. This remarkable victory in Henley v. Philip Morris, Inc.– which included $50 million in punitive damages – was by far the largest jury verdict ever against a tobacco company. Two months later an Oregon jury returned a verdict in excess of $80 million in another individual suit against Philip Morris. (See finalist Gaylord, et al.)

Chaber had to overcome a legendary scorched earth defense by Philip Morris. It filed massive motions on minimal notice, noticed multiple depositions simultaneously in different states, and filed two or three briefs every morning of the four-week trial. At trial, Chaber presented more than 1,000 documents and a multitude of experts to expose the tobacco company's efforts to target underage smokers and cover up the scientific evidence linking smoking with cancer.

When the verdict was announced, the value of Philip Morris stock dropped 10 percent. Less than six weeks later, R.J.R. Nabisco announced it was selling its international tobacco business and spinning off its domestic tobacco business as a separate corporate entity. Even though the trial judge later halved the punitive damages award to $25 million, he issued a virtually unprecedented indictment of the tobacco industry in upholding the remainder of the verdict.

Chaber's victory will empower other plaintiffs' attorneys around the country who, prior to Chaber's verdict, stood little chance of accessing the courts, let alone beating Big Tobacco.

Morris Dees, J. Richard Cohen and Marcia Bull Stadeker of the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Alabama, sent a powerful message to racist groups across the nation and effectively crippled the South Carolina Ku Klux Klan, with their extraordinary verdict of $37.8 million against the Klan for its involvement in burning down a black church in South Carolina. In Macedonia Baptist Church v. Christian Knights of the Ku Klux Klan – Invisible Empire, Inc., et al., Dees and his team sued four Klan members, the North Carolina parent corporation, the South Carolina affiliate of the Christian Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, and Horace King, the "grand dragon" of the South Carolina Klan.

Morris Dees and his investigators uncovered proof against King and his top aides by interviewing ex-Klan members, often in dangerous locations. Dees sat in jail with Klanmen who had sworn a blood oath to King and the Christian Knights and convinced them to renounce their allegiance and testify in court. King and the Klan organizations also raised the First Amendment defense that incendiary racist speech, short of incitement to imminent violent action, is typically protected. But Dees, Cohen, and Stadeker were able to gather a mass of evidence that King had actually authorized racial violence.
The jury returned a $37.8 million verdict against all the defendants, including $37.5 million in punitives, the majority of which were against King and the Klan organizations. The verdict marks the end of the Christian Knights as a viable hate group.

Bill Gaylord of Gaylord & Eyerman, Ray Thomas and Jim Coon of Swanson, Thomas & Coon, and Chuck Tauman of Bennett, Hartman & Reynolds, all in Portland, Oregon, dealt a stunning blow to Big Tobacco, achieving an $80 million jury verdict, the largest ever against a tobacco company for the estate of a deceased smoker, Jesse D. Williams in Williams v. Philip Morris, Inc.. This followed on the heels of a California jury's $51.5 million verdict against Philip Morris. (See finalist Chaber.)
Bill Gaylord and his team members found themselves fighting the tobacco industry's legendary legion of professionals. The team had to overcome Oregon's eight-year statute of repose for product liability, proving that the lung cancer that killed Williams – a lifetime smoker – was caused by cigarettes purchased in the eight years preceding his diagnosis. The team had to demonstrate actual damage caused by the cigarettes because Oregon law does not allow product liability actions based exclusively on the inherent carcinogenic qualities of tobacco.

The jury found Williams and Philip Morris equally at fault, awarding $800,000 in compensatory damages to the estate. Also finding the corporation guilty of common law fraud, the jury then awarded $79.5 million in punitive damages.
Although final judgment has not yet been entered and the trial court is reviewing the verdict, the result holds Philip Morris accountable for the human losses caused by tobacco, clarifies the applicability of fraud principles to mass-marketed products, and tests the limits of punitive damage jurisprudence under Oregon and federal constitutional law.

Timothy M. Kaine, Rhonda M. Harmon and Thomas M. Wolf of Mezzullo & McCandlish of Richmond, Virginia, won a $100.5 million verdict against Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company in Housing Opportunities Made Equal v. Nationwide Mutual Ins. Co., the largest verdict ever in the state of Virginia and the largest verdict ever in the country in a fair housing case.

Testing by Housing Opportunities Made Equal (HOME), a Richmond-based fair housing group, showed that Nationwide Insurance had discriminated against African-Americans by denying their requests for coverage, by offering them coverage at much higher rates than those offered to white testers, or by offering them coverage for market value rather than replacement value coverage.

Litigating against four law firms located in three cities, Kaine, then a Richmond City Council Member, conducted over 100 days of depositions and obtained over 50,000 documents from Nationwide during two years of discovery. Although Kaine was elected Mayor of Richmond shortly before the trial, he nonetheless was co-lead counsel at trial.

Kaine and Harmon proved the intentional discrimination claim with their grasp of technicalities, as well as by showing that Nationwide used a variety of means to identify predominantly African American neighborhoods. The result achieved sends a powerful message to Corporate America that discrimination based on the racial composition of neighborhoods will not be tolerated.

Jan Eric Peterson, Fred Zeder and Chris Young of Peterson, Young, Putra, Fletcher & Zeder in Seattle achieved an unprecedented victory against the swimming pool industry on behalf of Shawn Meneely, who was rendered a quadriplegic when he dove from a diving board into a residential "hopper bottom" pool, breaking his neck upon impact with the pool's floor.

The key defendant in Meneely v. National Spa and Pool Institute was the National Spa and Pool Institute (NSPI), the trade association for the swimming pool industry that sets industry standards for residential pools. Among the 8,000 documents unearthed while litigating this case over 6 years was a 1982 letter from NSPI's primary expert and consulting engineer, warning that this particular diving board was exceedingly dangerous when installed on hopper-bottom pools and recommending that it be removed and decertified.

Before trial, Meneely and his family offered to settle if NSPI would change its standards. NSPI refused. The jury awarded Meneely compensatory damages of $11 million, including a $6.6 million judgment against NSPI. This victory has dealt a serious blow to the product liability defense tactic of hiding behind industry standards that the industry itself establishes and should force a change in standards to reduce the number of spinal cord injuries.

Dianne Jay Weaver and Mike Ryan of Krupnick Campbell Malone Roselli Buser Slama Hancock McNelis Lieberman & McKee in Fort Lauderdale won a landmark $17.99 million judgment in Wynn v. Towey, et al. against the State of Florida on behalf of Aaron Wynn, a man suffering from a traumatic brain injury who had been mistreated and abused in state hospitals.

Wynn spent much of his 3½ years at a state evaluation and treatment center in seclusion and restraints – left for hours or days tied spread-eagled on a bed, covered in his own excrement – and medicated with drugs used for schizophrenia, not brain injury. Weaver believed this failure of the Florida Department of Health & Rehabilitation Services to provide proper medical care violated Wynn's civil rights, and she combed through 27,000 pages of documents on Wynn's treatment to discover the information she needed.
Weaver and Ryan structured the suit as a civil rights action and named 21 individual defendants, including those who directed the state facilities, the medical director who developed Wynn's treatment plan, and his physicians, social workers and psychologists.

After a seven-week trial, the jury held 17 of the 21 defendants accountable and awarded Wynn $17.99 million dollars – the highest civil rights verdict in Florida's history. The state settled the case for $17.75 million. Wynn now resides in a residential facility and is treated with compassion and dignity, and the state has been forced to improve its treatment and evaluation of people suffering from brain injuries.